Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period

by Clara Helen Whitmore

But the novel owes its place among English classics to the varieties of characters portrayed and the vivid pictures of English life. Here again the gaieties of Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Marylebone and the Pantheon have become immortal, drawn with colours as vivid and enduring as Hogarth used in painting the sadder sides of London life. No other writer has brought these places before our eyes as clearly and as fully as Fanny Burney.

The plot of Cecilia, like that of Evelina, is so arranged as to present different classes of society. Cecilia has three guardians, with one of whom she must live during her minority. First she visits Mr. Harrel, a gay, fashionable man, a spendthrift and a gambler, who lives in a fashionable house in Portman Square, where Cecilia, during a constant round of festivities, meets the fashionable people of London. Next she visits Mr. Briggs in the City, "a short thick, sturdy man, with very small keen black eyes, a square face, a dark complexion, and a snub nose." He was so miserly that when Cecilia asked for pen, ink, and a sheet of paper, he gave her a slate and pencil, as he supposed she had nothing of consequence to say. He was as sparing of his words as of his money, and used the same elliptical sentences in his speech as Dickens afterwards put into the mouth of Alfred Jingle, the famous character in Pickwick Papers. He thus advises Cecilia in regard to her lovers: "Take care of sharpers; don't trust shoe-buckles, nothing but Bristol stones! tricks in all things. A fine gentleman sharp as another man. Never give your heart to a gold-topped cane, nothing but brass gilt over. Cheats everywhere: fleece you in a year; won't leave you a groat. But one way to be safe,—bring 'em all to me." Lastly she visits Mr. Delvile, her third guardian, a man of family, who despised both the men associated with him as trustees of Cecilia; he lived in such gloomy state in his magnificent old house in St. James's Square that it inspired awe, and repressed all pleasure. Pride in their birth and prejudice against all parvenus were the faults of Mr. and Mrs. Delvile.

Besides these characters, there were many others whose names were for a long time familiar in every household. Sir Robert Floyer was as vain as Mr. Smith. Mr. Meadows was constantly bored to death; it was insufferable exertion to talk to a quiet woman, and a talkative one put him into a fever. At the opera the solos depressed him and the full orchestra fatigued him. He yawned while ladies were talking to him, and after he had begged them to repeat what they had said, forgot to listen. "I am tired to death! tired of everything," was his constant expression.

In his critical essay on Madame D'Arblay, Fanny Burney's married name, under which her later works were published, Macaulay has thus dealt with her treatment of character:

"Madame D'Arblay has left us scarcely anything but humours. Almost every one of her men and women has some one propensity developed to a morbid degree. In Cecilia, for example, Mr. Delvile never opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich and the misery of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on her son; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly prattle; if ever Madame D'Arblay aimed at more, as in the character of Monckton, we do not think that she succeeded well.... The variety of humours which is to be found in her novels is immense; and though the talk of each person separately is monotonous, the general effect is not monotony, but a most lively and agreeable diversity."

While the character of Monckton is not strongly drawn, one or two scenes in which he figures have great power. Mr. Monckton, who had married an aged woman for her money, lived in constant hope of her dissolution. He planned to keep Cecilia from marrying until that happy event, when he schemed to make her his bride, and thus acquire a second fortune. He had used his influence as a family friend to prejudice her lovers in her eyes, and had just succeeded in breaking up an intimacy which he feared: "A weight was removed from his mind which had nearly borne down even his remotest hopes; the object of his eager pursuit seemed still within his reach, and the rival into whose power he had so lately almost beheld her delivered, was totally renounced, and no longer to be dreaded. A revolution such as this, raised expectations more sanguine than ever; and in quitting the house, he exultingly considered himself released from every obstacle to his view,—till, just as he arrived home, he recollected his wife!"

Cecilia, the heroine of the novel, is only Evelina grown a little older, a little sadder, a little more worldly wise. The humour is, too, a little kindlier. The practical jokes so common in Evelina do not mar the pages of Cecilia. At times the latter novel becomes almost tragic. The scene at Vauxhall where Mr. Harrel puts an end to his life of dissipation is dramatic and thrilling. But Miss Burney had lost the buoyancy and lively fancy which made the charm of Evelina.

Miss Burney's last two novels, Camilla, or a Picture of Youth and The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties, have no claim to a place among English classics. It is strange that, as she saw more of life, she depicted it with less accuracy. This might seem to show that her first novels owe their excellence to her vivid imagination rather than to her powers of observation. Her weary life at court as second keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte; her marriage to Monsieur D'Arblay, and the sorrows that came to her as the wife of a French refugee; all her deeper experiences of life during the fourteen years between the publication of Cecilia and Camilla—these had completely changed her light, humorous view of externals, and with that loss her power as an artist disappeared.

Camilla has several heroines whose love affairs interest the reader. It thus bears a resemblance to Miss Austen's novels, who speaks of it with admiration and was, perhaps, influenced by it. Eugenia, who has received the education of a man, is pleasing. Clermont Lynmere, like Mr. Smith and Sir Robert Floyer, imagines that all the ladies are in love with him. Sir Hugh Tyrold, with his love for the classics and his regret that he had not been beaten into learning them when he was a boy, his strict ideas of virtue and his desire to make everybody happy, is well conceived, but the outlines are not strong enough to make him a living character. Camilla shows more than Cecilia the style of Dr. Johnson. It is heavy and slow, the words are long, and many of them of Latin derivation.

It was not until the year 1814, the year of Waverley, that her last novel, The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties, was published, which, following the style of Camilla, was in five volumes. It was partly founded on incidents arising out of the French Revolution. The book was eagerly awaited; the publishers paid fifteen hundred guineas for it; but even the friendliest critic pronounced it a literary failure.