STUDY QUESTIONS ON FRANCIS BURNEY'S EVELINA
1. Compare Villars' description of Evelina and his attitudes about London and her future (1.4), with Evelina's attitudes and hopes, and her methods of persuasion (see 1.8 for Evelina’s first letter).
2. Describe E's behavior and feelings at her first ball. What does she learn here and how serious are her mistakes in etiquette? (1.11) Analyze what assumptions/values inform the society at the ball.
3. Attend to how Evelina uses her letters not simply to communicate to Villars but also to resolve her conflicts and to express/discover what she thinks and feels. Can you offer some examples of this?
4. What do you think of Sir Clement Willoughby and of E's responses to him at the ridotto? (1.13) Speculate on Burney's attitudes towards CW at this point--what is his function in the novel?
5. How does E tend to order her accounts of her experiences? What effect does this have on the reader?
6. Villars writes of his pleasure over E's mistakes rather than her attempt to adopt fashionable manners (1.15). What do you think of his attitude?
7. Keep track of Capt. Mirvan's and CW's treatment of Madame Duval, and E's opinions of this. Why do you think Burney has Capt. M and Mme. Duval in the novel? What values, ideas, and emotions can FB express through these characters?
8. How does E describe Lord Orville and why? (1.18)
9. What do you think of E's attitude toward the Branghtons' ignorance at the opera? (1.21)
10. Lady Howard supports Mme. Duval's desire to sue Sir John Belmont over Evelina's inheritance. What do you think of Villars' response to this idea and his wishes for Evelina? (1.28)
11. Analyze Lady Howard's letter to JB (1.31). How effective do you think it is or will be?
12. Why is Capt. M so intent on humiliating Mme. Duval and what do you think of Lady Howard's part in all this? (2.2)
13. Analyze the coach-ride episode carefully (2.2). How might this episode serve to comment on the novel's major themes, preoccupations, and techniques? What conflicts and problems does this episode represent?
14. Keep track of who laughs in the novel and for what reasons. To what purposes does FB use laughter? What characters become the butts of jokes? Who participates in joking and why?
15. Has E learned how to deal with CW yet? (2.3) What's so difficult about her situation?
16. Analyze JB's reply to Lady Howard (2.4). What do you make of it initially and what do you think of E's interpretation of it?
17. Are you surprised at Villars' decision regarding E and Mme. Duval? (2.7)
18. Is Villars' advice to E consistent with his earlier pronouncements? (2.8)
19. Does E's letter to Miss Mirvan differ from her letters/behavior with Villars? (2.10) What is E feeling now?
20. What does E's comparison of Mr. Smith to CW reveal about her values? (2.11)
21. Attend to E's adventures at Vauxhall (2.15). How does this episode offer a summary of E's problematic situation and has her character developed further by this point?
22. CW now seems more vulnerable, why? (2.16)
23. Note Mr. Smith's attitudes towards marriage and E's response to him (2.19).
24. What expectations/plot developments does Macartney's letter to E introduce? (2.20)
25. E gets lost at Marybone gardens (2.21). Two women accompany her back to her party--what are these women doing in the novel?
26. E again writes Miss Mirvan (2.26). What's her problem?
27. What do you think of Orville's letter to E and her evaluation of it? (2.27) Why doesn't she confide in Villars?
28. E describes Orville again. What do you think of the way she typically thinks of him? (2.28)
29. Keep track of Mrs. Selwyn's behavior and E's evaluation of it. What is Mrs. S's purpose in the novel? What does she represent and how is she useful to FB? See, for example, her treatment of Lord Merton and Mr. Coverley (3.1) or her assessment of Mrs. Beaumont (3.3) or her arguments with Lovel and Coverley (3.3).
30. What does E think of birth and fortune now? (3.3) Would Mrs. Selwyn agree?
31. Describe the nature of E and Orville's relationship (3.4). What's it based upon?
32. What do E's confusions over telling Orville about Macartney suggest about her ability to act and to think with relative freedom or independence?
33. What are the two old women racers doing in this novel? (3.7)
34. Finally, Villars warns E about Orville. What do you think of his injunctions and her response? (3.6, 3.9)
35. Meanwhile, what do you make of Orville's virtual adoption of E as his sister? (3.7)
36. Note Lady Caroline Belmont's letter to JB (3.13).
37. How does FB manage the scene with Orville and E? (3.15)
38. Consider the men's opinion of Mrs. Selwyn (3.16).
39. Explain the behavior of E and JB (3.19). How is FB using E's resemblance to her mother here?
40. Explain CW's letter to E (3.20) and her decision not to show it to Orville.
41. What is Capt. Mirvan's taunting of Lovel doing in this work? (3.21)
42. What does Villars sound like he's about to do in the novel's final letter from him to E? (3.22)
43. Explore episodes and relations of violence/violation--speculate on their relation to society’s expectations and attitudes towards women, especially regarding polite and decorous behavior.
44. Explore relations among silence, communication, rhetoric (and style/tone), particularly when considering Evelina’s position and strategies for persuading, manipulating, and describing (defining) others. What degrees of agency, mobility, and constraint do you find in her character? What kind of economy of circulation and exchange conditions her existence--does she participate in this economy in conscious and unconscious ways?
45. Here are some questions that emerge from Kristina Straub’s introduction to the novel’s cultural and historical contexts (see copy of Evelina on reserve, ed. K. Straub).
a. Consider the novel’s subtitle: When does a young lady enter the world, what world does she enter, and why was she not in that world before?
b. Explore the novel’s representation of an urban world of leisure pursuits and consumer commodities. Is this a world of rational progress and egalitarian possibilities, or one of luxury, self-indulgence, decadence, and the breakdown of more traditional social and moral order?
c. Consider the novel’s interest in violence as well as domestic serenity and speculate on the relationship of this violence to the rapid expansion of urban centers and the growth of English commitment to military conquest and dominance in international trade.
d. Explore Evelina’s place, function, position in relation to two common cultural narratives about female life: the importance of youthful, feminine innocence (perhaps in opposition to public life) and the inevitability of marriage as women’s fate.