Gender Relations in Frances Burney's 'Evelina'. The Emergence of 'Modern' Standards of Masculinity and Femininity

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, Humboldt-University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: I want to focus my examination on the two protagonists Evelina and Lord Orville, but will also take a look at Mr. Villars, Captain Mirvan, Sir Clement, Madam Duval and Mrs. Selwyn. The aim of this essay is to show that the gender relations depicted in the novel are not as unbalanced as one might think at first sight. The eighteenth century is an interesting era, because it can be considered a transition period between the Renaissance, when gender relations were slowly beginning to change, and the nineteenth century, when laws improved women's situation. The focus on the seventeenth and nineteenth century literature among literary scholars has left the eighteenth century a bit underrepresented. Although many things changed or had already changed in the eighteenth century, we can still trace patriarchal structures and ways of thinking going back until antiquity. 'Evelina' was first published in 1778, in the late eighteenth century.