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Subject: [Janeites] Camilla: The 'Concept of the Confidential'
From: Ellen Moody The above phrase is Margaret Ann Doody's. I have been rereading
this literary study-as biography and would like to say it is
excellent -- once you have read at least a couple of Burney's
novels and a reasonable amount of her diaries and letters or
read a biography which quotes from these as unexpurgated and
unabridged by Fanny herself or her niece, Charlotte Barrett.
There are some biographies which stand on their own: they
are introductions to the writer; you learn to love and to
want to read more. Such a book is Joyce Hemlow's. There are
some biographies whose greatness only becomes clear after
you have read some of the subject's works. These include
Victoria Glendinning on Anthony Trollope, W. J. Bate on
Samuel Johnson -- and Margaret Ann Doody on Frances
Burney (her favored version of the name -- myself I am
leaning towards Fanny d'Arblay).
The concept of the confidential. This is what is lacking
in Camilla. People invade, pervade, have no respect
for one another's space or sensitivities. I wonder if
this is a new concept derived from the enlightenment.
The concept of private space is itself a moot one in
this period.
Let me explain.
Some reading about letters before the 19th century and
the workings of the post office have begun to persuade
me that the very concept of private space, an area
you could write in and be sure no one but you and
some privileged friend or close family member could
get access to did not exist until the 18th century,
and then it only existed feebly until the 19th century
when for the first time letters were really regarded
as sancrosanct objects no one was allowed to open.
In both France and England only
in the 18th century was there an attempt to set
up a postal service which was not corrupt. In
England Ralph Allen organised the post office
to be separate from the government, and
no longer to be a private reserve for profit
by individual family networks. For the first
time the ideal (often still broken) was that no one
in government or the state could open your letter
and forward it to some spying organisation.
For the first time people who opened other people's
letters to steal money would be fired if caught.
For the first time an attempt was made to support
the postal service from the money paid by stamp
duties: before this it was acceptable to take
bribes, to demand bribes for delivering letters.
Fanny Burney's compulsive diary and letter writing
-- and the number of diarists and letter writers
who wrote from the heart and emerged but did not
publish their texts in the later eighteenth century
-- testify to a desire for confidentiality, private
space for the first time in Western literary tradition.
Boswell is another such figure, but the new release
is also recorded by Henry Tilney who cannot believe
that Catherine Morland does not keep a diary. To
say she does not is the equivalent of saying he and
she are not standing together, talking together,
real breathing human beings in Bath in an assembly
room.
Before the middle of the 18th century people who
wrote letters could only see themselves
as part of a family network which they could never
escape from, a network which would provide them
with jobs, marriage, everything. Letters were
mostly written (remember how few people could
write) as performances on behalf of
one's family to negotiate positions, money, gain
some advantage. Only slowly in the 18th century
does the private letter emerge. It is in the
second half of the 18th century we see a
large number of novels where characters write
letters to pour out their hearts to one another.
Why did Burney herself escape to her diary and
letter-writing nightly? Why was it such an
important valve? especially when she was imprisoned
in the court of George III? I think this concept
of confidentiality is not as important in Evelina
or Cecilia but is important in Camilla because
Camilla was written after Fanny was able to
take her private space back again.
An interesting aspect of the time between the publication
of Cecilia and the publication of Camilla is that
for a long time between them, very like Austen in
Bath, Fanny Burney had no comfortable base from which
to write. Daddy Crisp died, so she couldn't go to
Chessington. Her stepmother, a woman who had no
idea of privacy whatsoever, was in charge of her
father's home. There was the time at court. Only
when she married d'Arblay, did she have privacy and
space and time to herself again. Then she wrote
about it from the point of view of its preciousness
and rarity.
I wonder if confidentiality is something which is
today respected in principle but not in reality?
especially inside a family.
Ellen Moody
Re: Camilla: The Perverseness of Spirit
It continues to dismay me how people reading a book
and asked to talk about it interpret it in terms of whether
a character comes up to some moral standpoint of admiration.
This is as common in published literary criticism as it is
in literary talk on the Net. The difference is that former
is gussied up by theory and mandarin talk.
Probably one reason people hesitate before talking
about biography or travel writing is it's clear they are
standing in judgement on people. Yet there is no person
in the book. The only person in sight was the
author who may be dead.
As I see characters
in novels, their behavior is part of a design, and our response
to the design of the whole, and an increase in our
ability to sympathise imaginatively is what the greatest
books offer to us. I could as easily light into Anne Elliot
for her behavior as any of Burney's characters in Camilla.
Camilla has strength, interest, intelligence, and
some important things to say to us today, some of them
apparently more centrally an indictment of society
and human nature than Austen's own (Austen is
quieter, more enigmatic, though perhaps more devastating
when once thought about), though it has flaws too, one
of them prolixity and length. Basically I agree with
Margaret Anne Doody's discussion of Camilla (The
Life in the Works, pp. 197-273. It's true that
Doody doesn't sufficiently admit the possibility that 'the pseudo-priggish
schoolroom narrative that masquerades as Camilla
is as much at the center of the book as any of the
subtexts and cris de coeurs and ironies of the
dramatic narratives and meditations that make up
the actual content of the book. Apart from that, though, she is accurate, indeed brilliant.
The opening paragraph (which no one
here quoted) tells us the terrain of the book that
Burney wanted us to explore:
What does Burney mean by this? How we spend our lives
desiring what we cannot have, twist and turn, drive and
torture ourselves for what others have and is said to
be admirable. And how if we allow such desire to shape
our decisions at the end of life we end up in a 'void'.
This is her paragraph; she opens the book with it. I don't
know how she can make the meaning she has in mind
more explicit. She has to keep it general in order
to cover how people feel shame so variously, act to
avoid it; try to take what others have because it is
denied us.
Doody points out the theatricals of the novel: the characters
go to see a performance of Othello and she quotes
at length to show a skein of allusions to Othello; she
opposes all Dr Marchmont's speeches to Tyrold's
letter. In context it is clear the former are the result
of the man's inability to cope with sex, the latter totally
inadequate as a way of finding happiness. One
as bad as the other. Doody writes:
She also writes that:
Burney shows us a mad world (like that of Cecilia).
We learn we cannot trust men to trust women nor depend
on them; in fact all the people in the novel are
intently distrustful and exploitative of one another continually.
In the early part of the novel Burney is also brilliant on what children
really are. She is as hard and accurate as Austen in
her unsentimentality and understanding of their intense
passions. In the later parts of the novel I see a strong
dramatization of what Doody quotes from the diaries,
a conflict between what society demands and natural
passions dictate In all spheres: luxury as well as
sex. Where in Evelina Burney presents brutal
practical jokes without registering any criticism; in
Camilla she is alive to the same sorts of cruelties
that make the experience of an Austen novel so
intense -- or amusing (depending upon your point
of view). It's also a story about misperception and
anxiety (as Austen's are). Community life in Camilla
is bizarre, weird because social values pervert feeling
and behavior. Far from encouraging us to blame
others (and thus protect ourselves from seeing
our own vulnerabilties), the final sentence of this
book is: "What, at last, so diversified as man?
What so little to be judged by his fellow?"
Many Austen parallels everywhere. It's not the
tone of mind: Austen's tone of mind is closer
to Cecilia. _Camilla_ is full-throated, very
direct. The opening sentences about Camilla
herself remind me of the opening sentences of
Emma. I have always been struck by the
strong judgemental quality of Lady Susan:
the de Courcys sit about coldly scrutinizing
one another. I have wonder how we are to take
this: Camilla shows me it's wrong, that
what I feel on my pulse is what Austen
meant me to feel. Camilla also deals with
pervasive embarrassment (says Doody).
that is Austen's topic too.
Cecilia is perhaps the greater novel for its
breadth: many more types of people, many
more classes. The story of Belfield widens
the book out into a kind of Vicar of
Wakefield. However, Camilla had some
important things to say to its generation, and
can say them again, if we are willing to make
that act of the imagination which transposes
its terms into our own. For example, it is
about how perverse we are. How we hurt
ourselves. The characters enact these
things not so we should sneer at them
and feel superior. But so that we should
see our own twisted ways of getting
through life as society has constructed
it.
I can see why Austen subscribed.
Re: Burney & Austen: Camilla & Sanditon
While it's true that the sort of fiction which is susceptible to exalting
the rake type easily is mocked by Austen in Sanditon,
it's also true that Charlotte Heywood puts down _Camilla
because she's too old for it and has a personality which is too self-contained
to be give way to the kind of anxiety and partlys self-inspired torment
Camilla undergoes. Charlotte must work to repress certain thoughts
in order to maintain her apparent composure. To suggest all this
in small compass (which Austen manages) is to produce a kind
of text that Burney just doesn't have the linguistic tact for.
I believe that through Charlotte Heywood Austen is
telling us something of the reality of her inner life.
Ellen Moody
To Janeites
October 13, 1999
Re: Camilla: Fashionable spas
I suggest that Burney's scenes at Tunbridge are
not gay but uncomfortable. On the surface they
sem gay, having a quick beat tone and sarcastic
distanced appraisals in the Johnsonian style.
These keep us from entering into the mood of the scene
for the participant. I am reminded of the scene
between Darcy and Bingley on the first night Elizabeth comes
down from upstairs in Netherfield where Jane has become
sick: probably partly because Bingley engages in sarcasm
at Darcy's height, but it is also uncomfortable, anything but
gay or fun beneath a surface of sharp wit and intelligent
appraisal which amuses readers.
This is not a small matter. Camilla is
centrally about a socially-crowded
world where all impinge on one another and are in constant
competition, oneupmanship, on guard, and secretive.
It's not a pleasant place. Consider Burney's assessment of Miss Dennel's history
and character:
This reminded me of a paragraph describing a Miss Bennet
early in Cecilia.
It's interesting that Laclos reviewed Cecilia and
praises it strongly. Textual Promiscuities by
Toni Sol compares Cecilia closely to Les
Liaisons Dangereuses. Because we see such strength
of amorality in Laclos's characters and therefore
differentiate them from Burney's does not mean that
that is what struck the 18th century readers
about such pairs of people. The essential imprisonment
and manipulation of the private self might have
seemed to them the point: that's Rousseauist
and brings us to Marianne's stance in S&S: if
we are to control our behavior by fear of impertinent
remarks or what others think, we can do nothing since
'we are offending every day of our lives' some fool or
interested person. Does not Camilla let herself be
so controlled? Does not Euphemia flee from it?
Does not Mrs Arlbery rebel?
One of the many things I was struck by in Maggie Lane's
book on Bath and Fanny Burney was her sigh of relief
that Burney liked Bath. In Lane's book on JA's
England a rare moment of irritation can be
glimpsed in Lane when she says Austen's attitude towards
Bath was 'perverse' and proceeds herself to celebrate Bath
and take what she can from Austen's novels to try to
reinforce her own view rather than Austen's.
However, Burney's attitude towards Bath is debatable.
Her tone in the early scenes islively, quick, sharp, upbeat. However, if you read
what Burney says, she is continually sardonic, bored, and often
made uncomfortable by what she sees or describes others as
uncomfortable, vain, half-mad and preening. I'm not sure Burney did
like Bath in the way or for the reasons that Lane likes it. Burney
is fascinated by the people; loves to go to see new places. But
does she like what she sees?
Burney's last visit to Bath came after she and her husband,
Alexander D'Arblay returned from France; they lived on a small
income, and Bath was a place for such elderly people on a
limited income by that time. In the quotations Lane has
from Burney's diary at that point, Burney is happy. But
what does she describe: how she and her husband do very
little, breakfast, chat, walk, he goes off
to drink the waters or see a doctor for his health (hopeless,
he had cancer), she sees a few family members, maybe
a friend; by four after small meal (which recalls the time and
hour of eating in The Watsons), they are settled by their fire,
she writing and he reading. The quotations have a lovely
atmosphere of contentment. The D'Arblays are in Bath because
it's cheap and pretty (she seems more alive to the scenery
at this point). They also hope for some help for one
of them medically.
For Burney's last visit, Lane has missed the inward feel of
Burney's enjoyment: where it stems from. For Burney's second,
Lane has breezed over the actual content of what Burney writes.
I suggest Burney's attitude was much closer to Austen's
than Lane grasps. Burney lived among a different sort of
person than Austen, and the circumstances of their
existences accounts for a lot of the difference in their
outward behaviors.
Returning to Camilla, the scenes at
Tunbridge have the same curious
dual vision and it's easy to miss what the author is
feeling for real and expects us to feel and think.
Austen gets to it much more succinctly in her scenes,
but even there what the 18th century reader found
compelling in these scenes might come from a lifestyle and
consequent imprisonment we no longer have to endure so, like
Lane, miss the point or think it's not important.
Think of Austen's Mrs Palmer; think of having to spend your
days in close proximity to her, controlling your
behavior by what passes for values in what passes
for her mind. In this link between Burney's real
attitude towards Bath and these social scenes at Tunbridge
in Camilla we may glimpse why Austen enjoyed Cecilia
and Camilla and what are the links contemporaries
saw between Cecilia and Camilla and P&P and
S&S.
The lady in white is a Miss Belfield type. Here is
our sentimental heroine who figured forth for
the 18th century the kinds of troubles vulnerable
powerless women could have.
Cheers to all, To Janeites
October 25, 1999
Re: Camilla: Read as Deadpan Jaundiced Parody of a Heroine In
Search of a Mother
There is real strength in Book 6 of Camilla: it seems as soon as Fanny Burney
moves into these social scenes, she comes into her own. Perhaps
the way to read all these scenes is as written from a pen filled with
jaundice. Imagine someone utterly disdainful of it all, detached, detailing
these antics of these monkeys for our amusement. Then perhaps the
book will work. I thought the scene wherein Sir Sedley described what
he understood to be love could be read as strong from that point of
view: I suddenly realise I am rehearsing Julia Epstein's argument about
how to read Burney. I was reminded of a number of similar scenes in
Cecilia except they seem here to be stronger, bitterer, perhaps
because Camilla is so much more self-abnegating, sweeter, and
definitely in love.
Another way to read: if one could be amused by straight imitations
of the absurdities, pettinesses, and fashions of your world, Burney
must have been amusing. She is probably really describing the
outer behavior of types for the 1790s. A Clueless for the 1790s
(which movie imitated types). I am only amused up to a point;
soon I want to turn away from the soul-withering behavior. It
reminds me of the conversation between Mary Crawford and
Tom Bertram about what being out means. Edmund tries to
suggest that the behavior of a young girl when she's out or
not as described by both of them is awful: insincere, shallow,
absurd. They cannot hear him, for they fail to get the point.
They accept the shallow superficialities of behavior, Mary
because they amuse her and she'd rather not have depths
and sincerities, Tom because he can't comprehend it. Tom
can only see the conventional surface.
I see more and more why writers compare Camilla to MP: it's
Mandlebert's relationship to Camilla and hers to the world. It's
a superficial likeness in that Burney does not go into the inner
life of why someone would act like Camilla nor Mandlebert, but
the paradigms are similar.
Camilla's relationship with Mrs Arlberry remind me of Cecilia's
with Mortimer's mother. There seems always to be this yearning
for some mother figure in Burney: we saw it in _Cecilia_ directly,
by implication in the story of the motherless Evelina. I have
been reading a book on modern romances for women, especially
Harlequins, but all femine romances of the formulaic type. It
is argued that women read these to find a mother figure, by
which is meant some nurturing figure who will make the woman
the center of his or her existence the way the woman is made
to make the center of her existence her children or husband.
We see this in Burney who cared for others, sacrificed for
all, but turned to create a fictional world in which the heroine
was the centre whom all want to or are thwarted from nurturing.
After all, Mandlebert can't stop thinking about her; he wants
to control her every movement. To women, so says this book,
that's much better than indifference. Camilla and
Burney's other fictions are written from the daughter's
point of view, a daughter lonely for a mother.
Cheers to all, November 12, 1999
Re: Camilla: Lionel and Eugenia, Cripple as Heroine
Tthere are two characters in this book who, had Burney courage,
ought to have been put at the center: they are the ones that
count, that tell us some truths about life and human nature.
Eugenia and Lionel. The continual cruelty to the one, and
the viciousness of the other which is accepted by all, tells the
story of how indifference to all but one's own feelings and
one's own practical safety and prestige are at the heart of
cruelty. Not an important message. Consider why the people
who don't do the fighting in war accept it; then consider
those who do do the fighting.
There was a book here worth writing, a dark comedy about
ennui too, about constraints, about stupidity, but Burney didn't
write it. In my mind, if we add the sarcastic Mrs Ardkill
it begins to resemble a book by Choderlos de LaClos.
The real life story of the French painter of flowers in the
early 19th century, Rosalie de Constant was partly
a result of her having been born ugly (so it was said),
her having been crippled, and her having no money.
Ellen Moody
Nancy asks me what is the moral of Camilla.
Easy:
Human beings are absurd and irritating. If you don't watch
out, they will involve you in their financial and emotional
nonsense.
To Janeites
January 17, 2000
Re: Camilla: Mr Tyrold and Camilla
I suggest that Mr Tyrold is very like Charles Burney and Daddy
Crisp. The details of the portrait recall Fanny's
biological father, the general shape of the relationship
recall Fanny's adopted father. More and more Camilla
seems to me an idealisation of Fanny when young. Edgar
recalls a young man who pained Fanny badly by seeming
to be about to propose but never doing so (Cambridge
was his name).
Nancy wrote:
Mr. Tyrold, 'the lover's eye': 'He sees
that his Camilla is unhappy but will not question her ...
Mr. Tyrold "would make no inquiry that might seem a reproach, nor
suffer any privation or contribution that was not chearful and
voluntary'.
To which I replied:
Charles Burney's way of controlling his daughter was
to withdraw affection. He would not make an explicit
reproach. He was also on the surface always cheerful
and only wanted from his daughters what was 'voluntary'.
Ellen Moody
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 Nancy asks for a parsing of the following passage:
If we think of Camilla as a Marianne (which Nancy suggested the
other day), we can see the assumption: the narrator says Camilla
is so sick she does not need to make herself ill. In _S&S_
Marianne makes herself ill through her indulgence in the
heights of despair through her imagination.
There is an explicit allusion to Camilla in Sanditon where
the sentimental passionate heroine, Clara, is likened to Mrs
Berlington and Camilla too. I suggest Austen has the more
ambivalent approach; that is, Burney is more sympathetic in
the sense that she presents Camilla as harassed, over judged,
manipulated. Marianne is seduces as much as she is seduced
by Willoughby. She does not betray him the way he betrays her.
Cheers to all,the wilder wonders of the Heart; that amazing
assemblage of all possible contrarieties, in which
one thing alone is steady -- the perverseness
of spirit which grafts desire on what is denied ...
'In her novel's structure Burney questions the
structure of conventional courtship, displaying
the illogicality o fthe enduringly intricate and
rule-bound activity which supplied so much
of the fictional suspense of novels, and so much
of the misery of real lives, including her own ...'
'In a Picture of Youth [the novel's subtitle]
we see the youthful characters being subjected
to the process of acculturation; advice and
convention redirect the nervous, active and unstable
private emotions, suppressing them or forcing
them to choose only approved channels. The
result is real craziness, and the world's approved
behavior is crazy ... '
Miss Dennel, born and educated amidst domestic
dissention, which robbed her of all will of her
own, by the constant denial of one parent to
what was accorded by the other, possessed too little
reflexion to benefit by observing the misery of
an alliance not mentally assorted; and grew up
with no other desire but to enter the state herself,
from an ardent impatience to shake off the
slavery she experienced in singleness. The recent
death of her mother had given her, indeed,
somewhat more liberty; but she had not sufficient
sense to endure any restraint, and languished
for the complete power which she imagined a
house and servants of her own would afford. (pp. 390-392)
Ellen Moody
Ellen Moody
From: Ellen Moody
Reply-to: Janeites@onelist.com
Subject: [Janeites] Camilla: A Prototype for Marianne ...
"A fourth night therefore passed without sleep, or the refreshment of
taking off her cloathes; and by the time the morning sun shone in upon
her apartment, she was too seriously disordered to make her illness
require the aid of fancy."
Ellen Moody
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