Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

egarding women's places in society. Burney also
questions artificial standards set for women by a rigid
patriarchal system of marriage and inheritance.
In the same vein, John Richetti asserts that novels
tend to resist what their representations uncover about
social relations. He claims the sentimental novel of the
mid- to late-eighteenth century marks "an extensive
revulsion with the moral compromises enforced in such
negotiations for identity" (117) . Richetti continues,
confirming Johnsonf s idea of a "new realistic novel," in
that the characters of eighteenth-century novels become
"exceptions to the prevailing social rules" (116).
Authors mold their plots from real life, but novelistic
situations represent events less than ideal, ones that
make good lessons for Johnsonf s 'young, idle and
ignorant."
Richetti suggests that these novels deal with a
tension created between the "private self and its
communal surroundings, mutually defining and qualifying
relationships that dramatize an inevitable
interdependence between private self and public society"
(116). The tension between public sphere and private
individuals was certainly a palpable part of eighteenth-
century society. Burneyfs world was full of this kind of