Evelina

Susan C. Greenfield (Essay Date July 1991)

SOURCE: Greenfield, Susan C. "'Oh Dear Resemblance of Thy Murdered Mother': Female Authorship in Evelina." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 3, no. 4 (July 1991): 301-20.

In the following essay, Greenfield counters the common interpretation of Evelina as a quest for the validation of the father, instead arguing that Evelina—and Burney—in fact establish their legitimacy through the authority of the mother.

Frances Burney's first published novel, Evelina (1778),¹ is a story about an orphan girl's quest for identity and her development as a writer. The novel traces the heroine's search for a parental author who can name her and establish her position in the world; at the same time, since the text is epistolary and most of the letters are written by Evelina, the heroine herself is an author. In this essay I examine Evelina's representation of authorship in each sense of...