Writers of Influence - Fanny Burney

Throughout her career as a writer, her wit and talent for satirical caricature were widely acknowledged: literary figures such as Dr Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Hester Thrale and David Garrick were among her admirers. Her early novels were read and enjoyed by Jane Austen, whose own title Pride and Prejudice derives from the final pages of her novel Cecilia. William Makepeace Thackeray is reported to have drawn on the first-person account of the Battle of Waterloo, recorded in her diaries, while writing Vanity Fair.


Fanny’s first novel, Evelina or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, was published anonymously in 1778, without her father's knowledge or permission. It was unthinkable at the time that a young woman would deliberately put herself into the public eye by writing, and Burney had to commandeer the assistance of her eldest brother, who posed as its author to her publisher,  Lowndes. Inexperienced in negotiating, Burney only received twenty guineas as payment for the manuscript.

I had great fun reading this book when I first started my researches into the lives of 18th century women.

The novel was a critical success; admired for its comic view of wealthy English society, and for its realistic portrayal of working-class London dialects. It was even discussed by some characters in another epistolary novel of the period: Elizabeth Blower's The Parsonage House published in 1780.

Evelina Book Review by Kate Howe The Book Nomad

The novel brought Fanny to the attention of patron of the arts Hester Thrale, who invited the young author to visit her home in Streatham. Though shy by nature, Fanny impressed those she met, including Dr Johnson, who would remain her friend and correspondent throughout the period of her visits, from 1779 to 1783. Mrs Thrale wrote to Dr Burney on 22 July, stating that: "Mr. Johnson returned home full of the Prayes of the Book I had lent him, and protesting that there were passages in it which might do honour to Richardson: we talk of it for ever, and he feels ardent after the dénouement; he could not get rid of the Rogue, he said." Dr Johnson's best compliments were eagerly transcribed in Fanny’s diary.

Burney went on to write three more best sellers: Cecilia: Or, Memoirs of an Heiress, 1782; Camilla: Or, A Picture of Youth, 1796; and The Wanderer: Or, Female Difficulties, 1814. Although her novels were hugely popular during her lifetime, Burney's reputation as a writer of fiction suffered after her death at the hands of biographers and critics who felt that the extensive diaries, published posthumously in 1841, offered a more interesting and accurate portrait of 18th-century life. Today critics are returning to her novels and plays with renewed interest in her outlook on the social lives and struggles of women in a predominantly male-oriented culture. Scholars continue to value Burney's diaries as well for their candid depictions of English society in her time.

Sources: Wikipedia

Roxana - Moral ambiguity, sex, and murder

Published anonymously, and not attributed to Defoe until 1775, the novel Roxana was a popular hit in the eighteenth century although many readers find it hard going today.

Roxana was Defoe’s last, darkest, and most commercial novel about a woman who trades her virtue for survival and, once she is secure financially, continues to sacrifice her virtue for greater and greater riches writes John Mullan in the introduction to the Oxford World Classic edition of Roxana.

Money, or lack of it, is the root of Roxana’s and many female literary characters until the present day.

The book is supposed to be a biography of one Madamoselle Beleau, the lovely daughter of French Protestant refugees, brought up in England and married to a good-for-nothing son of an English brewer.

Fictional biographies, an oxymoron if ever there was one, were all the rage in 18th century literature and Defoe’s story of Roxana was a particularly salacious one filled with moral ambiguity, sex and murder; a sure fired recipe for success even in today’s literature market.

The plot has many twists and turns but begins when after eight years of marriage, our heroine’s spendthrift husband leaves her penniless with five children to look after. Receiving no help from her relatives, she abandons her children to the care of an old woman; a sure sign a woman is about to become morally and socially persona no grata but Roxana justifies abandoning her children on the grounds that they were starving, confessing, ‘the Misery of my own Circumstances hardened my Heart against my own Flesh and Blood.” Of course, her husband has already abandoned them but there is no moral approbation for him.

The penniless Roxana starts up an affair with her landlord whose wife has left him when he offers to share his wealth with her, bequeathing her five hundred pounds in his will and promising seven thousand pounds if he leaves her. Her relationship with the landlord is often condemned by critics as a relationship based on personal gain and not love going against the English romantic ideal; an ideal that was more honoured in the breach than in reality especially when it came to families with money in the eighteenth century.

Anyway the fictional  pair settle down together but Roxana fails to produce a child for her new lover so she sends her maid to do the job for her, which she does. Roxana takes the child as her own to save her maid’s reputation and two years later, Roxana has a daughter of her own but she who dies within six months. A year later, she pleases her lover with a son. So far, Roxana’s actions are a curious mixture of adhering to and breaking the social, religious, and cultural norms of the day but with the death of her common-law husband, the landlord,  she becomes a true libertarian devoid of morality and sexual restraint.

In the next part of the book Roxana becomes a greedy hedonist and the mistress of a French prince with whom she has a son. She could have stopped her whoring when the landlord died, she had enough money to live as a quiet widow but she did not. She likes money and sex and seems to have little or no feeling for the children she produces along the way. Finally, she marries a Dutch merchant who has been her long time lover and friend and has another son.

Roxana’s new and respectable life is threatened by the reappearance of her oldest daughter, Susan, who wants to claim her place in the upper classes besides her mother but Roxana is saved from exposure when Amy, her long serving maid and confidant, murders the bothersome child.

When her husband dies soon after Susan’s murder Roxana enters the final phase of her fall from matronly virtue to a common harlot famed for her Turkish dancing.  She returns to England with her bloom has well and truly gone but she still believes she has sexual power over men. Gradually she sinks to working as a common prostitute receiving a multitude of different clients to maintain her lifestyle.

Interestingly, the ending of Roxana is shrouded in dispute. In Defoe's original version Roxana does not die, but repents for the life she has lived, and that too—according to Roxana herself—only because she comes to an unhappy end after the death of her husband. However, with the book being published anonymously, as was often the case with fictitious histories in those days, it went through several editions with various endings, in all of which Roxana dies repenting of her sins.

The novel’s influence in feminists’ eyes comes from the fact that it examines the possibility of eighteenth century women owning their own estate despite a patriarchal society, as with Roxanna's celebrated claim that "the Marriage Contract is...nothing but giving up Liberty, Estate, Authority, and every-thing, to the Man".  It further draws attention to the incompatibility between sexual freedom and the responsibilities of motherhood in a world without contraception.

Some say the character of Roxana is a proto-feminist like Defoe's other great female character, Moll Flanders, because she works at prostitution for her own ends as a way of gaining her  independence from men. Indeed Defoe would have been aware of women all over London doing the same but probably with less success than his female characters neither of which succumb to the pox.

Roxana is however, a novel of its time more focused on themes Defoe’s readers would have recognised than feminist ideals I'm sorry to say but I do think Defoe at least recognised an abandoned woman's plight.

Roxana is a mashed up Restoration Comedy character. She carries both the hope and optimism of the young that things will turn out well for her financially and in love but she is also burdened by the corruption of those who went before her with her greed, moral corruption, and self-delusion; perhaps the same mixed feelings Defoe would have experienced himself from his work as a political satirist.

The happy ending of these Restoration plays is supposed to be a restoration of order from the chaos and confusion fostered by the older generation’s dishonesty and greed. This is perhaps why Defoe’s conclusion to the novel does not seek to punish Roxana with death as so many of its more puritanical publishers did when they re-wrote the ending.

I think he knows there is no escape from the corruption of power and money and he wants to reprieve Roxana from his own Calvinist judgement in the same way he hopes for forgiveness for his own deceptions in the world of politics and for his own personal ambition and avarice. Roxana repents and lives like Defoe himself. The presence of morality does not ensure the good succeed and the wicked are punished. (See my Facebook page to find out more.)

Sources:
Defoe, Daniel. Roxana, ed. John Mullan. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxana:_The_Fortunate_Mistress

Writing about women in the past

Grand Duchess Natalia Alexeievna
shown pregnant and happy
in a portrait by Alexander Roslin, 1776. 

The position of women in the historical novel is problematic for authors like me. Exploring the strengths and weaknesses of my characters and how they cope with the historical world is what interests me and I want to show women in a positive and realistic light. However when it comes to writing about women in past I am confronted with some tricky problems.

The main problem is that for most of history women were legally, socially and economically subject to the will of men.

As my November blogs show even queens and princesses had very little control over their own lives.

Woman by Francesco Gasparini

In a strange way poor women were the freest to be themselves as they worked even when they were married and had children and earned their own money. The problem for these women was that their earnings were always vastly inferior to men’s and a woman alone was almost invariably a poor and exploited one. It's true in London and other towns where social anonymity was the norm many women turned to prostitution as a more lucrative way of staying alive.

For women of the middling sort, I hesitate to use the word class here, as for most of history there was no middle class as we know today, financial dependence on men was the norm even into the middle of the last century. Of course financial dependence on men has not gone away as women are still paid on average 16% less than men for the same work!

With no meaningful contraception, women were almost always burdened with pregnancy, subject to premature death in childbirth and responsible with almost all childcare unless a woman was wealthy enough to employ a nurse or nanny.

A single 'free' woman in the past was the exception and was almost certainly viewed as unsuccessful. Marriage and children were the markers of success for a woman in past and still are for most men and women today although more women are going it alone than ever and are happy with their decision. For the majority of us who marry it's a struggle to manage a demanding career and a family no matter how successful a we are in our chosen profession.




So how does the modern author go about creating their female historical characters?

Well some authors focus their attentions on the few women who broke the mould in the past while other abandon any sense of historical verisimilitude. Some use the Cinderella formula while others make their female characters masculine, sassy and ruthless. All of these forms can work if the story is good but they are not for me in the Tales of Tooley Street as the main characters are inspired by actual people who lived and worked at 65 Tooley Street for three generations.

Some argue that The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (commonly known simply as Moll Flanders) a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722 is the prototype for a female character who by the end of the novel controls her own life and is financially independent. Moll achieves what many feminists call success.

Alex Kingston in the BBC
 adaptation of Moll Flanders

Feminist writer Diana Del Vecchio says, "By the end of the book, Moll has completely appropriated the role of the husband, the provider, the masculine, the seeker, the adventurer, the leader, the thinker, and has figuratively donned the clothing of man, while keeping her nature as woman intact. She makes the final decision to enter and sign a legal contract with her son, where he manages her inherited land and gives her an annual compensation of the lands’ produce. When she returns to Jemy, it is she that supplies him with a dowry of a gold watch, a hundred pounds in silver, a deer skin purse, Spanish pistols, three horses with harnesses and saddles, some hogs, two cows, and other gifts for the farm. She enters this relationship with the fortune of her inheritance and the many accoutrements that she has acquired and accumulated in her years as a thief. For the first time in her life, she forms a relationship with a man, where she is the one in control."

The fact that Moll has to step outside the law to become independent is the problem for me but it is probably a realist one as Defoe was fully aware of the way society worked in the early 18th century. Prostitution and thieving were rife in London in the 18th century but most women involved in the trade did not end up like Moll. Most ended in an early grave, at the end of a noose or transported for life if caught. My character is inspired by a respectable widow who raises her son to be a successful doctor so prostitution and thieving are not options for her.

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Historian Lucy Worsley's most recent BBC TV series on the Wives of Henry III offers an alternative approach to the female character and narrative in history.





In the series she looked at the events of Henry's reign through the eyes of the women involved. She cleverly managed to breath new life into this over worked territory by showing Katherine of Aragon as a competent and popular queen not as the obsessively religious woman of traditional portrayals who was intelligent, ambitious and for much of her 24-year marriage gave as good as she got. Anne Boleyn too was shown as a clever and ambitious woman betrayed by her husband and removed on trumped up charges of adultery. Jane Seymour was a young and tragic a woman fed to the old lecher of a king by her male relatives only to die in childbirth. Ann of Cleaves was a smart political operator who negotiated herself out of disaster and ended up one of the richest women in England. Catherine Howard was what we would call an abused child who did not know how to say no to powerful and determined men; and, Katherine Parr was a wily woman of great learning and intellect who used her position to promote the establishment of the 'new religion' Protestantism and managed to out manoeuvre and outwit her enemies at court. See a clip by following the link. Six Wives of Henry VII clips.

In my own writing I have taken the Lucy Worsley approach. My heroine, Charlotte Leadam, the widow of the Tooley Street Surgeon Christopher Leadam is intelligent and resourcefulness but she is an 18th century woman living in 18th century London. She faces financial oblivion when her husband dies as she cannot run the apothecary shop she owns becasue as a woman she cannot hold a licence and becasue she has to pay her husband's debts.

As a widow she yearns for the return of the feeling of financial security and independence she enjoyed when she was married but she does not want to remarry, not at the start with at least. As grief slowly disappears she finds that she needs to love and be loved again. Charlotte achieves her desires by complying with some social conventions of the day and by ignoring others but she's always well within the law. Here's an excerpt.

Tales of Tooley Street - Charlotte Leadam
 (Portrait of an unknown woman c. 1780)

 “You and John will stay here with us now that Christopher has gone,” her mother said, in a tone that indicated it was not a matter for discussion.

“That’s very kind of you and father, but Christopher has not gone, as you put it. He died; my husband is dead. I am a widow, not an abandoned child.”

“We know that, dearest. Your father and I comprehend the situation all too clearly,” she said, handing her daughter a fresh towel and a bar of soap. “You’re a woman without a husband and without an income. You cannot simply go back to your old life, Charlotte; it no longer exists. Your father and I have discussed the matter, and we have decided that it is best that you and John stay here where we can provide for you. That is until you marry again.”

The flame of ire burning in Charlotte’s chest was rekindled and refuelled. Whilst she could not dispute her mother’s analysis of the situation, she was nonetheless livid with her for expressing it so clearly. She bit her lip, held her tongue and breathed the long slow breaths that Christopher had taught her to use in such situations. Experience told her that this was not the time or the place to have an argument with her mother. Losing her temper never worked; she had to be more cunning than that. As calmly as she could she said, “Mother, I have no plans to remarry.”

“I’m not saying that you have to forget Christopher. I’m not that cruel and insensitive. ” She pointed to the bath. “Your father took this in lieu of payment from a whore in St James’s. The poor woman could not pay her rent either, so your father took the bath before the landlord did. My friend Mrs Peacock says that bathing is of great benefit for the nerves, so I thought you might like to try it. I shall not be doing so: I’m too old to change the habits of a lifetime. Besides, they cost a fortune in hot water – which is all very well for Mrs Peacock: her husband is a banker. And I can’t use poor Millie like this again; she is exhausted with carrying the pails from the kitchen.”

When her mother had gone Charlotte launched herself face down onto the bed and let out a long, low scream of frustration. How dare her mother decide what she was going to do with her life without even talking to her about it? And why had she told her about the whore? Was she trying to warn her what happens to women who are left on their own?

Volume 1 of the Tales of Tooley Street, "Sinclair", will be available in March 2017