Review of Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress, by Frances Burney
If I ever heard of Cecilia or Frances Burney, it is a vague memory at best. Until I found this book while scrolling through the Librivox app, it was not part of my daily awareness.
I saw the recording was nearly 36 hours long. Would it be worth it? I took the plunge.
Like many audio recordings of older books, it took me a while to groove into the plot, setting, and characters. Miss Burney wrote Cecilia during the American Revolutionary War, though it takes place in England and scarcely mentions the Americas. It was published in 1782. For a book that is nearly 250 years old, I found it fascinating for its place in history, as well as its content.
This book is told in the third person, in what I myself call the “Central Gravity Point of View.” Like perhaps the majority of authors prior to the Victorian era, and many since, the author had no qualms about “head-hopping,” or random changes in character perspective within the same scene. However, the factor that makes it a “Central Gravity” POV is that the main character, Cecilia Beverly, is always dominant in the consciousness of the writer and reader. Scenes far from Cecilia’s view are rarely depicted, and when they are, they lack any depth of perspective. The book is very Cecilia-centric, though the thoughts of those around her are frequently revealed.
Cecilia is a “novel of manners.” As such, it explores and exposes, for good and for evil, the culture and society it depicts. Centered around London, but rambling out into the English countryside, the book depicts the lives of the contemporary British upper class. Unlike Dickens, who decades later focused more on the merchant class, lower class, and impoverished members of society, Frances Burney chose to explore the titled aristocrats. As a contemporary work of fiction, few if any real-life characters are depicted.
One of the most striking things about this book is that it is an early work written by a woman, published in her own name, and featuring the life of a female protagonist who struggles through the many trials and tribulations thrown into the pathway of a woman in her place and station of life. Coming years before other female authors such as Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and many more, Cecilia and Miss Burney’s other novels helped forge the way for female authors and women’s fiction. Indeed, these books had a distinct influence on most authors who came later, most notably on Jane Austen, who even found the noteworthy phrase “Pride and Prejudice” on the last page of Cecilia and used it as the title for her most famous book.
My impressions:
The plot is incredibly deep, tight, and narrow compared to the ramblings of Dickens or Tolstoy. Dickens is deep, loose and broad. Tolstoy is shallow, loose and broad.
Like Dickens, who came later, Burney explored the financial motives of her characters in great depth and didn’t spare her heroine or other characters from the inevitable results of bad choices. Also like Dickens, Cecilia explores the interactions between rich and poor, and exposes a widespread contemporary disregard for the lot of the poor by the rich of the day. As a warm-hearted, generous protagonist, Cecilia seeks to employ a prudent methodology to her attempts to help those in need. Unsurprisingly, people sometimes take advantage of her.
The novel also explores and exposes the downsides and weaknesses of the aristocratic system as well as the widespread corruption, misplaced priorities, and irresponsibility of the upper echelons of 18th century British society. Rather than suggesting a remedy or replacement for the entire system, however, Miss Burney caused her protagonist and other responsible characters to apply their wits, courage, moral perseverance, and intelligence to work within the system to set their own affairs straight and assist others when possible.
From a writing perspective, I was surprised to find such a lengthy novel not embellished with extensive descriptions of setting and characters. Miss Burney seemed to think it sufficed to introduce new characters and allow their name, life situation, and mannerisms to provide enough evidence to goad the reader’s imagination to provide the remaining details. Clothing, furniture, buildings, and infrastructure received very little description. It may have been a function of the age—people may have assumed everyone knew what these things looked like, so there was no need to elaborate.
To narrow in on the lack of description, I only have to compare Frances Burney’s work to that of Stephen Crane, who can’t seem to write five words without one of them being a color. (The Red Badge of Courage, anyone?) Where a few characters’ clothing or costumes occasionally receive a rare coloring adjective, clothes, eyes, and hair are rarely given any in this book. This all makes me wonder if Miss Burney was color blind? I can find no reference to that possibility, but I tend to ask funny questions sometimes.
The treatment of servants in this book is also interesting. While the plot and delivery of the storyline are quite tight, the aspect of servanthood is one area where I notice some inconsistency as the book winds along. Granted, this is nothing like the unforgivable exploded plotlines Dickens is infamous for, such as in The Old Curiosity Shop, but I noticed it nonetheless. Here’s what happens. At the beginning of the book, there is hardly any mention of servants, maids, etc. As we go along, Miss Burney seems to realize these indispensable people need to be acknowledged, so reference is made to them more and more often, and their roles are more detailed. By the end of the book, some of the most important servants are given names, and we are to understand these dear silent persons have been present and had those names all along, but it was never considered important to reveal their names until near the end. Again, compared to other authors and books, this is a minor consideration and is merely a “tell” regarding the struggle the author underwent in composing such a massive and artful manuscript.
Indeed we must remember that all writing was done by hand in those days, and if I understand correctly, Miss Burney wrote this massive and intricate manuscript in less than two years. Unlike Dickens’ works, which were released in serial form in periodical publications, Cecilia hit the shelf as a complete novel. Compared to the use of our electronic editing tools today, making corrections and changes by hand in such a massive document would be an overwhelming undertaking. Taking that all into consideration, I consider Cecilia to be a brilliant and well-polished book.
As for its suitability to young readers, there are only a few shocking or disturbing scenes. There is one noteworthy suicide, but it is committed “just offscreen.” Unlike many other authors, even in those days, I didn’t notice any direct references to sex, or any clear instances of improper sexual relationships (adultery, fornication, etc.). On the contrary, most of the characters seemed intent on avoiding the appearance of scandals of this nature. There were indeed occasions when scandal occurred based on a misunderstanding of impropriety, but these are well understood by the reader to exonerate the main character. I can think of one occasion where a sympathetic supporting character confesses and explains some details from his sordid past, but he is heartbroken and repentant about it and has distinctly mended his ways. The vagaries of the account, I think, are acceptable for nearly any reader old enough to stick with the story that far.
That brings us to another point, the wordiness and length, which is typical of many older works. I listened to Cecilia as an audiobook, and if you’re going to take in the unabridged version, I recommend to do it by audio, while you drive or do repetitive tasks not requiring your full concentration. One frustrating thing is the unrelenting circumlocution of the dialogue, which accounts for many of the misunderstandings in the plot. The grandly constructed sentences of the upper class of Britain lend themselves to some puzzlement of mind, to the point the characters truly confuse each other with their speech.
As a glimpse into the culture of the time, Cecilia is a valuable window on a bygone age. One point of interest is the extensive use of sedan chairs by the wealthy characters. In this case, they are usually referred to simply as “chairs” with statements like “she called for her chair to be made ready, and left at once to visit her guardian.” The use of these chairs as a vehicle of transportation is, for instance, satirized in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” written around fifty years earlier. Sometimes more associated with tropical climates in recent times, these chairs were in very common use for wealthy people in the British Isles in the 1700’s. This required servants to carry the chairs, and again, this is hardly mentioned by Miss Burney until near the end of the book when the servants are more explicitly named.
No spoilers, but I was pleased enough with the ending. Unlike some of Dickens’ books, for instance.
For all I rag on Dickens, you might think I don’t like him, but actually I love his work. It contrasts very much with that of Frances Burney, though. For all that, I suspect he may have read Cecilia. Some of the plot points show up in modified form in some of his writings (more than 50 years later). Could it be that both authors simply knew British society so well they randomly came up with similar topics and plot instances? Maybe. But I suspect I see some of Miss Burney’s influence on old Charlie. Some of her characters are so synchronized with some of his, as to give one pause. I don’t think it ranks as plagiarism by any means, but just influence.
Will you like Cecilia? If you like the works of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, there is a high chance you’ll appreciate Cecilia. If you’re more of a Dickens reader, you’ll find some amusement worthy of your perusal. Comic moments certainly exist in this book, though that is not its primary purpose. People say Cecilia is rather dark, but I don’t find it any darker than Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, maybe less so.
Anyway, I enjoyed it and feel I gained riches from the text. If you like lengthy uplifting books from 240+ years ago, you might like it too!
James S. Davis 