The Story Archive

Evelina

Frances Burney · 1778 CE · Novel · English · Enlightenment

A girl raised in rural seclusion by a guardian, and unacknowledged by the father whose name she cannot use, is brought to London at seventeen and blunders through assembly rooms, opera boxes and Vauxhall on a set of rules nobody has explained to her. Burney writes the comedy from inside the embarrassment, letting vulgar relations and predatory gentlemen expose a marriage market that costs a woman far more than it offers. Published anonymously at twenty-five to immediate success, it made a young woman's entrance into society a serious subject and set the terms Austen would work in.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
ComedyRomanceComing-of-Age
Theme
Coming of AgeClass & InequalityIdentity & SelfLegitimacyLove
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
InnocentHeroineEveryman
Plot structure
EpistolaryBildungsromanComic Resolution
Symbol / motif
The LetterThe CityThe Dance
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
ComicSatiricalRealist
Culture / tradition
English

Closest analogues