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Constraints to female expression in Frances Burney’s novel, Evelina (1778)

By Serena Kerrigan-Noble - English Language and Literature Student @ Lincoln College, Oxford

 

Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World is a novel written by Frances Burney and first published anonymously in 1788. This 3-volume epistolary novel follows the eponymous character Evelina, the unacknowledged but legitimate daughter of a dissipated English aristocrat raised in rural seclusion. The novel recounts the humorous events which befall Evelina upon her entrance into eighteenth-century society in Lo