In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf informs us that ‘towards the end of the eighteenth century, a change came about which, if I were rewriting history, I should describe more fully and think of greater importance than the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses. The middle class woman began to write’.[1]
It is therefore unsurprising that the conception and significance of home proved a popular topic for the female novelists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England. The social change that characterized the period saw an increased involvement of middle class women in the production and reception of the arts, and so naturally, an incorporation of the private and the domestic life into the public sphere was born. Both Frances Burney and Jane Austen – whom were reaching out from within this realm to a new generation of socially orientated and ambitious (largely female) reading middle classes – were preoccupied with the concept of home, which they explore largely in relation to what Emily Allen refers to as ‘the eighteenth century’s privatization of female identity’.[2] Frances Burney’s Evelina, or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into The World (1778) is an epistolary novel that narrates a young woman’s struggle with the social etiquettes and demands of eighteenth century London – the title itself suggesting a tension between ones private identity and public image. A similar issue is interrogated not long after in Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1816) – a novel heavily influenced by Burney’s – where the significance of home continues to be interplayed with the shaping of identity. It must be noted that despite the Novel’s function as a pleasurable fictional read, it also holds the authority to educate. In the case of Burney, Evelina performs a crucial role in the training and preparing of its female readers for their own eventualities. The sense of home granted by a secure public identity was not something easily attained for the woman of high birth in this period and so Evelina informs its readers of ‘how easy the rise of the middle class woman was not’;[3] an insight that has been internalized and reproduced in Austen’s Persuasion. Whether the home is referred to in its physical existence (a house or national home located in space and time), or the more interior conceptions of home as belonging (in a domesticated or societal sense); I aim to establish why and how these multiple notions of home function to create an all-encompassing sense of Home. A sense of Home that holds such a crucial function in granting or denying our female protagonists in the text, as well as our female novelists outside of the text, a public identity.
It is first necessary to consider the function of the domestic home in providing a sense of belonging and identity to the middle class woman in this period, both in terms of family heritage and marital status. The domestic home is heavily romanticized by Burney and Austen; the acquisition of which is portrayed as something to be desired, pursued and possessed within their courtship narratives. Evelina is claimed to be ‘a novel concerned on all levels with issues and proofs of origins and identity’,[4] something which is evidenced from the very first letter as Madame Duval (Evelina’s grandmother) requires Rev. Villars (Evelina’s guardian) – ‘with whom she understands the child is placed’ – to ‘procure authentic proofs of its relationship to her’.[5] From the offset, Evelina exists out-of-home; the death of her mother denies her a maternal attachment and her fathers subsequent failure to acknowledge her deprives her of any biological or familial recognition – she naturally belongs nowhere. Austen’s protagonist Anne Eliot is born from a similarly disrupted home; her mother had too passed, with her father finding ‘little to admire in her’, nothing to ‘excite his esteem’.[6] Both Evelina and Anne exist as outcasts to conventional forms of domesticity, and although Rev. Villars and Lady Russell attempt to function as surrogates, they do not provide the same security and stability that parental recognition would grant the daughters of wealthy baronets in late eighteenth century socialite England. This lack of recognition in a world where rank and heritage determined public identity and social status, at a time when ‘a mothers protection was peculiarly necessary for her peace and her reputation’[7] can be seen to explain both Evelina and Anne’s lack of agency and autonomy later in their own domestic affairs. Following her fathers paternal rejection in Volume II, Evelina refers to herself as ‘absolutely abandoned’, an ‘outcast’, ‘rejected for ever by him to whom I of right belong’.[8] By referring to herself as belonging to another, Evelina is recognising her own objective existence. Anne is too a possession without a home, and when her sister Mary ‘required her’ to come to Uppercross Cottage instead of joining her father Sir Walter and sister Elizabeth at their new residency in Bath, Anne’s sentiment is that ‘to be claimed as a good … is at least better than being rejected as no good at all’.[9] The lack of a true domestic home leaves both Evelina and Anne metaphorically out-of-place and in search of possessors to grant them a place to call home. Their lack of any real navigational power in the narrative leaves them at the mercy of the men they encounter, both relentlessly searching for the home which they had since birth been denied.
It may be said that Burney and Austen as authors somewhat compensate for their protagonists lack of home and social status by allowing them one on the page. A subtle metacommunicative drive can be seen to underline Evelina, causing it to narrate just as much Burney’s own ‘entrance into the world’ as the character that she creates, as our writer exists equally out-of-home, herself a ‘stable private self grappling with an uncertain social identity in a world where public views of identity were, though challenged, socially ascendant’.[10] Evelina was originally published anonymously with Burney’s professed originality in the preface – ‘I yet presume not to attempt pursuing the same ground which they have track; whence, though they may have cleared the weeds, they have also culled the flowers, and though they have rendered the path plain, they have left it barren’.[11] The image of Burney entering a ‘barren’ literary landscape is indicative that her relationship as individual writer to the public world as readers is very similar to Evelina’s struggle within the text itself, indeed, ‘Burney had as much reason as her ambitious heroine for concern about her public character’.[12] The woman’s transition from the safe haven of her private metaphorical home into the public sphere is a journey that Burney narrates to her readers through the character of Rev. Villars; ‘Remember, my dear Evelina, nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman: it is, at once, the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things’. [13] The fragility of reputation is integral to Anne Elliot’s character in Persuasion too, and the damaging nature of her past associations with Captain Wentworth keeps the topic largely concealed among the other characters. However upon leaving Kellynch Hall and the Elliot’s, Anne is allowed to re-establish her home among the Crofts and the Musgrove’s who do not devalue her worth. She tells us that during her visit to Uppercross ‘her own spirits improved by change of place and subject’[14], by ‘the removal from one set of people to another’[15] which indicates the importance of a social home in shaping ones private identity as well as public.
It is the home in its more literal sense that can be seen to bridge the gap between ones private identity and ones desired projected image. The role of the physical house and the nation in upholding social status proves integral to both novels, unsurprising in a world where rank, etiquette and image defined character. Persuasion opens with Sir Walter’s outrage at having to leave Kellynch Hall – ‘a house which had such a character of hospitality and ancient dignity to support’[16] – as part of a retrenchment plan. The idea of the physical home embodying a character and status of its own and retaining its inhabitants’ public identity is something which Austen plays on and mocks throughout the novel. When the suggestion is made that Sir Walter might downsize to another property in Somersetshire, Lady Russell acknowledges that ‘It would be too much to expect Sir Walter to descent into a smaller house in his own neighbourhood’.[17] The physical house functions in the novel as the signifier of ones financial fortune, thus without Kellynch Hall, Sir Walter fears his social status will cease to exist – ‘he could not have borne the degradation of being known to design letting his house’.[18] However, Austen’s contrasting of Kellynch Halls past and present residents can be viewed as a mockery to the value the landowning classes put on the material home in upholding image, as counteracting Sir Walter and Elizabeth’s perception of the home is Mrs Croft’s claim that ‘women can be as comfortable on board as in the best house in England’.[19] This idea of home being attained outside of the physical house is visible in Evelina too, as the novels epistolary form draws attention to the geographically dislocated nature of the narrative. The letters travel between Rev. Villars at Berry Hill and Evelina in multiple locations; Howard Grove, Holborn, Clifton, yet her lack of stable location does not prove a defining characteristic in her sense of home. When Evelina finds herself in London for a second time but with her ‘ill-bred’ Branghton cousins as opposed to the more agreeable Mirvan family she writes; ‘O Maria, London now seems no longer the same place where I lately enjoyed so much happiness … my situation so altered! My home so different! – my companions so changed![20] Again, the home that is important to our protagonists is represented as something not physically possessed but more a state of being achieved by a sense of familial and domestic belonging, which in turn reinforces ones public identity.
The hostile and xenophobic spats in Evelina between Captain Mirvan and Madam Duval – ‘do you suppose, Madame French, we have not enough of other nations to pick our pockets already?’[21] – indicates the role of the national home in shaping and retaining middle class identity, particularly among the naval ranks. This sentiment is visible in Austen’s writing also, and has likely stemmed from the threat that the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-1815 imposed on England in this period. Captain Mirvan’s territorial stance parallels that of Sir Walter’s in Persuasion who often uses the term ‘native’ when referring to those with heritage in his home county of Somersetshire, treating those outside as imposters; ‘This peace will be turning all our rich naval officers ashore … they will all be wanting a home.’[22] This suggests that not only the national home but the regional home proved important in shaping middle class identity in this period, the home being viewed in geographical terms as situating and therefore binding individuals.
To conclude, the different notions of home that are called attention to by Burney and Austen in their novels are not to be appreciated in isolation from one another. Whether it be the domestic and familial home, the societal home or the physical home, they function variably within the narratives to establish a public identity for the new and ambitious middle classes in England at the turn of the century. However, Burney and Austen’s authorship as women of high birth allows the desires and anxieties regarding the domestic and social in this period to be projected in and through their female protagonists. I refer back to Virginia Woolf’s claim at the beginning that defining the eighteenth century was that ‘the middle class woman began to write’.[23] Following this, it is perceivable why the different conceptions of home and its importance seems to saturate both Evelina and Persuasion’s courtship narratives, as ‘the cultural climate in England … made it possible for womens love, taste, judgement, feeling and words to become, for the first time in history, the fit matter for literature’.[24] The birth of the domestic novel in this period is thus inescapable from exploring the importance of home, as despite its grappling with the human desire to belong, its role in consolidating public identity and social status at this time proved so integral to the success of an individual.
Bibliography
Austen, Jane. Persuasion. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited. 2007. Print.
Burney, Frances. Evelina. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2012. Print.
Allen, Emily. “Staging Identity: Frances Burney’s Allegory of Genre.” Eighteenth Century Studies Vol. 31. No. 4 (1998): 433-451. Print.
Armstrong, Nancy. “The Rise of Feminine Authority in the Novel”. Novel: A Forum on Fiction. Vol 15, No. 4. (1982): 127-145. Print.
Oakleaf, David. “The Name of the Father: Social Identity and the ambition of Evelina.” Eighteenth Century Fiction. Vol 3, No. 4 (1991): 343-358). Print.
Park, Julie. “Pains and Pleasures of the Automaton: Frances Burney’s Mechanics of Coming Out”. Eighteenth-Century Studies. Vol 40, No. 1. (2006): 23-49. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Penguin Books. 1945. Print.
[1] Virginia Woolf, ‘A Room of One’s Own’, p. 12
[2] Emily Allen, ‘Staging Identity: Frances Burney’s Allegory of Genre’, p. 435
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., p. 437.
[5] Frances Burney, ‘Evelina’, p. 12, (emphasis added)
[6] Jane Austen, ‘Persuasion’, p. 5
[7] Jane Austen, ‘Persuasion’, p. 12
[8] Frances Burney, ‘Evelina’, p. 187 (emphasis added)
[9] Jane Austen, ‘Persuasion’, p. 25
[10] David Oakleaf, ‘The Name of the Father: Social Identity and the ambition of Evelina’, p. 343
[11] Frances Burney, ‘Evelina’, p. 9
[12] David Oakleaf, ‘The Name of the Father: Social Identity and the ambition of Evelina’, p. 354
[13] Frances Burney, ‘Evelina’, p. 194
[14] Jane Austen ‘Persuasion’, p. 35
[15] Ibid., p. 31
[16] Ibid., p. 10
[17] Ibid.,
[18] Jane Austen, ‘Persuasion’, p. 12
[19] Ibid., p. 52
[20] Frances Burney, ‘Evelina’, p. 203
[21] Ibid., p. 58
[22] Jane Austen, ‘Persuasion’, p. 17 (emphasis added)
[23] Virginia Woolf, ‘A Room of One’s Own’, p. 12
[24] Nancy Armstrong, ‘The Rise of Female Authority in The Novel’, p. 127
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