Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

silence about Evelina and Burney that has continued until
just recently.
Watt mentions Frances Burney five times in The Rise
of the Novel. He sandwiches her between Defoe and
Sterne. Yet, Evelina is not mentioned at all. None of
Burney's works is discussed. However, when Watt
discusses Burney in relation to Austen, he admits Austen
finished the work that Burney began (298). In his last
chapter, Watt suggests that both Burney and Austen are
key to the legacy of female authorship. Watt admits that
Burney was "no inconsiderable figure in bringing together
the divergent directions which the geniuses of Richardson
and Fielding has imposed upon the novel" (296).
Nevertheless, Evelina, as wildly popular as Pamela and
Robinson Crusoe, remains unexamined in The Rise of the
Novel. Indeed, even Virginia Woolf declared that,
"Austen should have laid a wreath upon the grave of Fanny
Burney . . ." (72).
Marjorie Dobbin, however, effectively fills in some
of the lingering silence surrounding Burneyr s works.
Dobbin posits that eighteenth-century novels written by
women were instruments of social criticism, and women's
situations at the time were a good choice for such
criticism (43) . Certainly, Evelina raises many questions