Presented by Roberta Wolfson “Agoraphobia and Interiority in Frances Burney’s Fiction” By Deidre Lynch Presented by Roberta Wolfson

Lynch’s Main Argument “I want to argue that it is in dramatizing the reification attendant on a female character’s public appearances and her social exchanges that the novel of manners produces an inner consciousness that seems to operate independent of exchange relations. […] I want to suggest how depictions of consumer society could function in the romantic era as the literary venue for the production of a brave new world of female interiority” (Lynch 167).

“Agoraphobia” Objectification of the female body in the public sphere. “Burney faults the fashionable world largely because it makes the woman appear as a picture – as a still life” (Lynch 175). The heroine represented as a kind of “excessive embodiment” (Lynch 166) or “someone who is all body” (Lynch 166). Upon entering the public sphere, the heroine must subject herself to the outside gaze. The public sphere threatens the heroine’s: Identity. Control over the self. Unique individuality. Agency. “Burney seems to suggest that her characters would have the best chance of remaining characters – rather than fading into the background (like female visitors to the Pantheon), rather than being reduced to anonymous types – if they stayed still, outside the market and inside the home” (Lynch 175).

Agoraphobia in Camilla Engaging in consumer activities in the public sphere quite literally harms the female characters. Eugenia’s disfigurement. Camilla’s harassment while shopping. Camilla becomes subject to interpretation in the public eye: “[W]hat harms Camilla is the misrepresentation and self-estrangement that result when one must represent oneself in the public arena and accommodate other people’s accountings. Camilla’s problem is that she is answerable to others’ interpretative frameworks, others’ power to analogize between physical and moral being” (Lynch 175).

Agoraphobia in Evelina Evelina encounters most of her problems once she makes her appearance on the social scene. She is perceived as an object of desire to be judged and manipulated. Her many suitors (Sir Clement Willoughby, Mr. Lovel, Lord Merton, young Branghton, Monsieur Du Bois, Mr. Smith, Lord Orville). Yet she would not have made any social advancement if she had not entered the public sphere. How can we account for this discrepancy? Is Evelina an agoraphobic text? Or is it a celebration of the power of the public sphere? Or both?

Camilla’s Identity Crisis Camilla’s public image is a threat to her perceived character: “The more Camilla appears in public, the less she looks like herself, and the more – apparently unworthy of [Edgar’s] love – she resembles women like her cousin Indiana or like those who initiate her into fashionable society: ‘confirmed coquettes’ (681), the overdetermined figures who are at once designing manipulators of appearances and, as merely stylish women, far too apparently the products of a mercenary society’s designs” (Lynch 177). The problem of the “uniform” ball gown. “[T]his is a moment where the self is misrecognized, alienated, lost. […] Camilla’s clothed body seems to have the last word on Camilla’s identity here” (Lynch 183).

Evelina’s Identity Crisis Evelina enters the public sphere with ambiguous origins. A father who will not own her. A fake last name (“Miss Anville”). A dubious financial situation. Evelina’s struggle to conduct herself properly in the public sphere suggests a stifling of her “true” character.

“Reading” the Heroine The heroine is “read” by others in the public sphere. “[T]he text of appearances, like all texts, inevitably gives rise to readings different from the individual’s own” (Lynch 186). The reader must “read” the heroine as a complex project, not as a still-life. “In Camilla we see a character who is tailored to desires shaped by the new apparatus of reading. The animation that endows her with a body to be narrated, not pictured, also invites onlookers to look twice” (Lynch 189). “Burney rewrites the knowledge of character as a process or as a story” (Lynch 189).

“Reading” Evelina Lord Orville’s reading of Evelina. “I have made him confess how ill he thought of me, upon my foolish giddiness at Mrs. Stanley’s ball; but he flatters me with assurances, that every succeeding time he saw me, I appeared to something less and less disadvantage” (Evelina 420). Sir Clement Willoughby reading of Evelina. The reader’s reading of Evelina as a developing character. How does the epistolary form of Evelina underscore the complexity of Evelina as a character who can be “read” in different ways by both the other characters and the reader?

Automatons “Automatons are animated things” (Lynch 195). “[A]utomatons emblemized the ambiguities built into that new insistence on conjoining identity and activity” (Lynch 192). “Such automatized bodies transmitted a compelling spectacle of activity severed from agency. They displayed the vulnerability of the self-made individual – how the work of self-making could be work outside the self’s control” (Lynch 192). Do we see automatons in Evelina? Is the public sphere in Evelina mechanized or automated?

Questions How can we account for the fact that Evelina encounters her biggest problems in the public sphere but also would not make social advances without entering the public sphere? Is Evelina an agoraphobic text? Or is it a celebration of the power of the public sphere? Both? Do we see automatons in Evelina? Is the public sphere in Evelina mechanized or automated? How does the epistolary form of Evelina underscore the complexity of Evelina as a character who can be “read” in different ways by both the other characters and the reader? What is the effect of reconciling Evelina with her estranged father and equipping her with a substantial fortune? Why is this ultimate move necessary for Evelina’s happiness? Does this conclusion complicate or reinforce Lynch’s argument that “female faces and fortunes are substitutable objects belonging to a single system of currency” (171)?