1/ When I picked up Cecilia, having enjoyed Evelina, I wondered, is this a masterpiece unjustly neglected? Why is Frances Burney not widely read? Shouldn’t I try to promote Burney, “the mother of English fiction” as Woolf called her?
Now that I have read the book, I suppose Frances Burney’s novels are something like a bridge between the romance or sentimental novels that have faded into oblivion, and the more controlled, realistic novels of Jane Austen: Frances Burney writes well about manners and types of people in society and there are lots of brilliant moments in the book, but the story is very drawn out and there’s also lots of melodrama and silliness. It’s a novel that gets on your nerves and tests your patience. It’s novel that makes you better appreciate Tolstoy’s novels, no excess fat. As I have complained a few times on this blog (and many readers have on Goodreads), Cecilia should be significantly shorter: there is too much dialogue that neither moves the plot forward nor reveals more about the characters (as they are generally static); misunderstandings drag out for too long (so much of Cecilia is essentially Mortimer Delvile saying “Please let me explain” and Cecilia saying “No, I won’t listen!”, over and over again for hundreds of pages); the plot is exasperating.
“Cecilia had now no difficulty to disengage herself from Delvile, who, shocked at the exclamation, and confounded by the sudden departure of his mother, hastened eagerly to pursue her: she had only flown into the next parlour; but, upon following her thither, what was his dread and his alarm, when he saw her extended, upon the floor, her face, hands and neck all covered with blood!” (B.8, ch.6)
Melodrama!
“… in hurrying out of the room upon his attempting, in his frenzy, to strike her, she dropt down dead in an apoplectic fit.” (B.10, ch.3)
More melodrama!
But the most irritating part—to me anyway—is that the heroine is naïve and gullible and indecisive, and I got bloody sick of hearing about her virtue.
(You see, I have failed my original mission of promoting Frances Burney).
Compared to Evelina, Cecilia is more mature and ambitious and has more emotional depth, and it has moments of greatness, but the experience of reading it is not always enjoyable. No wonder people nowadays celebrate Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters and George Eliot but not Frances Burney.
2/ Frances Burney’s obvious strength is that she’s very good at capturing each character’s individual voice and manner of speaking—a quality we later see in Jane Austen and Dickens for example—and it makes them feel vividly alive. Her main weakness is that she doesn’t know when to stop. Most scenes are longer than they should be—the characters go on and on and on—we don’t need to follow all that.
When I put down the novel around page 600, not sure whether to continue (as the book is about 940 pages), it’s in the middle of a chatty scene—Cecilia decides to marry Mortimer Delvile in secret, then changes her mind, then hurries to London to meet him when the letter isn’t delivered—Burney throws one thing after another at Cecilia to prevent the meeting (and for a laugh, I guess)—and when Cecilia came across Miss Larolles and Morrice and a bunch of other yappers, I couldn’t take it anymore.
There’s so much talk talk talk.
Even in the final chapter, when everything has been resolved, France Burney still fills pages and pages with empty chatter.
And if the first two thirds of the novel have many conversations that are silly and frivolous, the last third has many conversations that are heavy and moralistic: Dr Lyster giving Cecilia a motivational speech after her breakup, Mr Albany giving a TED Talk about his past sins and the work he now does as penance, Cecilia and Mr Belfield talking about work and a sense of purpose, and so on and so forth. Makes me think of George Eliot, in both a good way and a bad way.
3/ My blog post so far hasn’t been very positive, I guess—Cecilia is not a novel I would push on everyone—but it’s worth reading if you’re interested in Jane Austen and/or the history of English literature and female novelists.
Jane Austen fans would find it interesting to read a predecessor who writes novels of manners and (occasionally) uses free indirect discourse, and I think would be delighted to find some echoes: the phrase “pride and prejudice” appears in Cecilia; Mr Delvile’s line “He bid me tell you that either he, or you must see his son never more” is reminiscent of Mr Bennet’s “Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do”; the vulgar and embarrassing Mrs Belfield gets reincarnated as Mrs Bennet; Cecilia listening to Henrietta Belfield talk about her love for Mortimer Delvile, so far above her, is paralleled by Emma Woodhouse hearing Harriet Smith talk about Mr Knightley; and so on. Read to see what Jane Austen learnt (stole?) from Burney, and see what she did better.
(As for influence in the opposite direction, there are lots of references to Shakespeare and Cervantes. Like this line in B.8, ch.8: ““Oh what,” cried she, “is human nature! in its best state how imperfect! that a woman such as this, so noble in character, so elevated in sentiment, with heroism to sacrifice to her sense of duty the happiness of a son, whom with joy she would die to serve, can herself be thus governed by prejudice, thus enslaved, thus subdued by opinion!””).
Cecilia also has an intriguing premise: what happens if a young man and a young woman love each other but she can only keep her inheritance if she marries a man who agrees to take her last name, and he comes from a very proud family that would not allow that? The long narrative about the Harrels has a pay-off: Cecilia’s thoughtless generosity towards Mr Harrel means she would be destitute if she gives up the inheritance.
But Cecilia is not only a love story—Frances Burney has greater ambitions—the novel is also about the importance of money and the dangers that come with wealth, and about manipulation.
“Disinterested as she was, she considered her situation as peculiarly perverse, that from the time of her coming to a fortune which most others regarded as enviable, she had been a stranger to peace, a fruitless seeker of happiness, a dupe to the fraudulent, and a prey to the needy! the little comfort she had received, had been merely from dispensing it, and now only had she any chance of being happy herself, when upon the point of relinquishing what all others built their happiness upon obtaining!” (B.9, ch.11)
I like that Frances Burney attempts to paint the whole of British society and depicts different social classes. Margaret Anne Doody is right when she writes in the Introduction:
“Burney’s works were important to Jane Austen, but Burney is not truly in the Austenian tradition. Rather she is in a tradition that includes Smollett and Dickens. And not just the early Dickens—the Harrels look forward to the Lammles and the Veneerings of Our Mutual Friend. Burney, like Dickens, is not primarily concerned with the development or adventures of a single character within society, but with the relation of a number of individuals to a social world which tends to warp them and press upon them, and which is too great for them to control.” (Oxford Classics edition)
But I think the greatest achievements are possibly the two manipulative characters: Mr Harrel and Mr Monckton. Mr Harrel is especially well-delineated and memorable, an unflinching portrait of a gambler. Mr Monckton is also interesting, especially when we discover how vicious he actually is, as the thing he has always wanted seems to slip from his grasp. It’s mainly in these characters, Mrs Harrel, and the proud Augusta Delvile, that Frances Burney has claims to greatness.
4/ Those of you who don’t want spoilers might want to ignore the rest of this blog post.
Quite a few people on Goodreads complain about the final chapters.
There are two things. One is the resolution, which is a deus ex machina and a bit clumsy—a while ago, I would have dismissed it as a ridiculous, unrealistic contrivance—but now that I have seen with my own eyes someone experiencing a nervous breakdown, it no longer bothers me much. The other thing is the ending—the conclusion to the love story and the difficult will. The happy ending is subdued, perhaps not very satisfying, but then it’s the 18th century.
I’m happy I read Cecilia.
