Cecilia: “if he will play Romeo, you, I dare say, will play Juliet”

 1/ When I picked up Cecilia, I wanted to promote Frances Burney—why is she not better known and widely read? 

Look at her achievements. As Frances Burney focuses on manners and codes of conduct and types of people, that makes her novels rather different from other 18th century novels I have read by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Jonathan Swift, and Charlotte Lennox (and beyond English fiction: Voltaire and Choderlos de Laclos), but rather close to the plays of William Congreve and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In other words, she’s going in another direction, pioneering the novel of manners*, which is later adopted (and developed) by Jane Austen. She also starts using free indirect discourse, which is later used extensively (and perfected) by Austen.  

*: Did anyone do it before her? No, I’m asking. I actually don’t know. 

The first half of the novel is about Cecilia living in the house of the Harrels and exploring fashionable society in London. She has seven suitors: Mortimer Delvile (I don’t know what Frances Burney was thinking, giving such a name to the love interest), Mr Monckton (who’s married), Mr Arnott, Mr Belfield, Sir Robert Floyer, Mr Marriot, and Lord Derford. No wonder Jane Austen’s more popular: it’s easier to relate to broke girls trying to find a normal and stable husband, than to an heiress pursued by seven men. 

After the final disaster of the Harrels, Cecilia moves into the house of Mr Delvile, another guardian. Then they go to Delvile Castle in the country, and get a visit from Lady Honoria Pemberton, a relative of the Delviles. 

She’s hilarious. 

“… cried she; “he has not the least spirit, and I dare say he would not fight to save the whole nation from destruction; but I’ll make him believe that it’s necessary, in order to give him something to think of, for really his poor head is so vacant, that I am sure if one might but play upon it with sticks, it would sound just like a drum.”” (B.6, ch.6) 

I know she’s volatile and airy and unthinking; I know she teases our heroine mercilessly and turns everything into a laugh; I know we’re supposed to disapprove of her; but Lady Honoria cracks me up. It’s especially funny when she teases the proud, stiff, self-important Mr Delvile. 

““For heaven’s sake, Lady Honoria,” said Cecilia, “could you find no better entertainment for Mr Delvile than ridiculing his own house?”

“O,” cried she, laughing, “did you never hear us quarrel before? why when I was here last summer, I used to affront him ten times a day.”

[…] “And do you call it so small a matter to wish a man’s whole habitation annihilated?”

“Lord, I don’t wish anything about it! I only say so to provoke him.”” (B.6, ch.9) 

That proud and insufferable Mr Delvile deserves some mockery and derision and he’s not going to get any from our amiable Cecilia, so I’m glad he gets it from the “unladylike” Lady Honoria. 

(Some of you may have noticed that Frances Burney seems to like female names that end in an a: Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla, Augusta Delvile, Priscilla Harrel, Henrietta Belfield, Lady Honoria…). 

There is, I should say, an important difference between many conversations in the fashionable society of London and her talks: many conversations in the earlier part of the novel don’t contribute much to the plot and their function is to depict the various types of people in high society, which can get exhausting (I don’t watch reality TV because I don’t want to listen to vapid people); the chatter of Lady Honoria is not all empty chatter, because she either reveals something about the Delvile family, including Mortimer, or she teases Cecilia and betrays her discomfort to Mrs Delvile. 

“And then, with the hope of appearing unconcerned, [Cecilia] raised her head; but meeting the eyes of Mrs Delvile fixed upon her face with a look of penetrating observation, abashed and guilty, she again dropt it, and resumed her work.” (B.6, ch.7) 

In these chapters, Frances Burney also gives us some pointed conversations between Cecilia and Mrs Delvile, and a few moments when they leave things unsaid, which Henry James would have enjoyed. 

“The state of her mind seemed read by Mrs Delvile, who examined her with eyes of such penetrating keenness, that they rather made discoveries than enquiries.” (B.6, ch.8) 

That whole scene is very, very good.

2/ The novel is around 940 pages. Cecilia falls in love with Mortimer Delvile (what a dreadful name) around page 250, so you can tell that they have to go through lots of soap opera stuff before they can get their happily ever after. 

In the first half of the novel, Frances Burney however focuses on society, the other suitors, and the baseness of Mr Harrel; it’s around page 450 or so that the marriage plot begins. 

I know I wrote that I wanted to praise and promote Frances Burney, but honestly one of the problems here is that Cecilia is extremely irritating: her gullibility; her weakness and irresoluteness about the Harrels; her “modest” behaviour towards Mortimer Delvile. In an earlier blog post, I complained that there’s a misunderstanding and every time an opportunity came up to clear it, they got interrupted, and the misunderstanding got dragged out for about 170 pages. When they’re at Delvile Castle, there’s another confusion, and every time Mortimer tries to speak to Cecilia, she refuses to listen. When he becomes ill, she feels guilty, thinking that her refusal to listen is partly to blame. But what does she do when he later stumbles into her and asks for three minutes? 

““No, sir,” cried she, indignantly, “not for an instant!” and leaving him utterly astonished, she hastened to her own apartment.

She was then sorry she had been so precipitate; nothing had been clearly proved against him; no authority was so likely to be fallacious as that of Lady Honoria; neither was he under any engagement to herself that could give her any right to manifest such displeasure. These reflections, however, came too late, and the quick feelings of her agitated mind were too rapid to wait the dictates of cool reason.” (B.6, ch.7) 

See what I mean? Frances Burney has no compassion for my poor nerves.  

3/ There are some affecting passages, when Cecilia sees that Mortimer has left her, knowing that his proud family would never accept such a marriage: 

“… having now no part to act, and no dignity to support, no observation to fear, and no inference to guard against, she gave vent to her long smothered emotions, by weeping without caution or restraint.

She had met with an object whose character answered all her wishes for him with whom she should entrust her fortune, and whose turn of mind, so similar to her own, promised her the highest domestic felicity; to this object her affections had involuntarily bent, they were seconded by esteem, and unchecked by any suspicion of impropriety in her choice; she had found too, in return, that his heart was all her own; her birth, indeed, was inferior, but it was not disgraceful; her disposition, education and temper seemed equal to his fondest wishes; yet, at the very time when their union appeared most likely, when they mixed with the same society, and dwelt under the same roof, when the father to one, was the guardian to the other, and interest seemed to invite their alliance even more than affection, the young man himself, without counsel or command, could tear himself from her presence by an effort all his own, forbear to seek her heart, and almost charge her not to grant it, and determining upon voluntary exile, quit his country and his connections with no view, and for no reason, but merely that he might avoid the sight of her he loved!” (B.6, ch.10)

This is moving and you can feel her pain, because Frances Burney has taken the time to depict the other suitors: Mr Belfield is irresponsible and doesn’t dare to pursue her once he removed the façade of wealth; Sir Robert Floyer and Mr Marriot are despicable, especially the former; Lord Derford is a simpleton, courting her only because his father wants her money; Mr Arnott is the only good man who loves her tenderly (I like that Burney doesn’t paint all the suitors as unlikeable), but Cecilia cannot return his feelings. Mortimer has everything she wants and they love each other, but he gives her up because the will dictates that she can only keep the inheritance if the man she marries takes her last name.  

When Mortimer discovers that she too loves him, he can no longer give her up. He proposes a secret marriage (like Romeo and Juliet). She doubts. She hesitates. She agrees. She struggles. She considers breaking the engagement. She freaks out after a conversation with the (villainous) Mr Monckton (that she stupidly trusts). She tries to break the engagement. Am I harsh on the 21-year-old Cecilia? Perhaps I am, but: 

“Cecilia returned to Mrs Charlton to acquaint her with what had passed; and notwithstanding the sorrow she felt in apparently injuring the man whom, in the whole world she most wished to oblige, she yet found a satisfaction in the sacrifice she had made, that recompensed her for much of her sufferings, and soothed her into something like tranquility; the true power of virtue she had scarce experienced before, for she found it a resource against the cruellest dejection, and a supporter in the bitterest disappointment.” (B.7, ch.7) 

Is that not irritating? Frances Burney does test my patience. 

But she doesn’t stop there. Cecilia writes to break the engagement but the letter doesn’t reach Mortimer (like Romeo), so she and Mrs Charlton have to hurry to London to find him, but they get interrupted on the way—Frances Burney just throws one thing after another at the characters—when I saw that the chapter had more than 15 pages left of Cecilia being held captive by those chatty, frivolous people of fashionable society, I had no patience left and closed the book mid-chapter. 

Am I going to continue? I do not know. I was near page 600. But the book, brilliant at times, is drawn-out and exasperating. Most of my reading this year, as it turns out, has been educational—I want to read something I really enjoy. 

The headline quotes Lady Honoria, B.6, ch.9.