Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

Evelina Anville, as much Burney's child as Caroline
Evelyn's. Indeed, in Frances Burney: The Life in the
Works, Doody states that '[Iln 1814 Frances can remind
her father that such shame was absurd, and that her
productions were ultimately validated . . . when 'the
mother of Evelina' and Evelina's mother-novel were placed
on a pyre . . ." (37). With the birth of Evelina, Burney
passed the legacy of the Evelyn family inheritance to Mr.
Villars and Mrs. Selwyn, narrative guardians of Miss
Anville.
In both Burney and Evelina's lives, inheritance
practice and its associated language weave in and out of
their respective relationships. Burney witnessed
problematic elopements, including her father's; endured
inheritance problems with her stepmother; and was herself
the object of the courtship of an eligible young man. The
complications and family upheavals caused by such events
as these helped to develop in Burney a sense of
ambivalence concerning her position in society. Evelyn
Farr tells us that Burney used Maria Allenf s, her half-
sisterf sf secret marriage as an example and did 'commit
the particulars to paper . . . in Evelina, where all the
heroinef s difficulties arise from her father's
repudiation of a secret marriage to her mother on the