Frances Burney’s Evelina, or, the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, is an epistolary novel* about Evelina, an orphan-heiress with a severe etiquette deficiency, learning to negotiate her social system.
As a beautiful girl of marriageable age and uncertain social status, Evelina is by default open to a wide range of social risk, mostly of the virtue-compromising variety — something which is only compounded by her lack of social graces. For instance, in order to avoid dancing with Sir Clement, who is a little creepy and follows her around, she says she is already partnered off — and then Clement, the 18th century version of the guy at the bar who can’t take a hint, starts exclaiming against her imaginary partner’s coat (“What! Did he address you in a coat not worth looking at?-What a shabby wretch!”).
Despite initial ridiculousness, Evelina is both restricted and able to gain some personal autonomy by following the stringent confines of etiquette — something which suggests Burney is critiquing the social systems of her time. Regardless of whether men are delicate or overcome with bouts of manliness, their behaviour is respectable (well, usually), however for a woman, moving through the world like a delicate flower is the only way to go. Evelina, who is herself a delicate flower, is only prevented from being a completely boring person by the fact that her social status is so undefined, which makes Evelina cross the line from being just old-school chick lit into something a little more interesting.
Though exploring a surprising amount of character development, the plot is a little barren and free from unexpected twists or turns. Lord Orville and Evelina end up married, as anyone who has read Austen might suppose would happen, and her financial situation is resolved to the satisfaction of most parties involved (and some who shouldn’t have been).
Evelina is a little weird, as many novels from the 18th century seem to be, however it is also incredibly funny. While it doesn’t feature too highly in the typical English literature canon, it is lighthearted enough that reading it solely from a literary point of view is far from dull, and reading it from any other point of view is even better.
*Told in letters.