Evelina Frances Burney Analysis

Frances Burney’s Evelina suggests that the innocence of a young girl is often her most prized possession, but in this text, innocence does not have a sole definition. The OED defines innocence as “freedom from sin, guilt, or moral wrong in general; the state of being untainted with, or unacquainted with, evil; moral purity.” The secondary definition given defines innocence as “freedom from specific guilt; the fact of not being guilty of that with which one is charged; guiltlessness.” Upon closer inspection, the innocence of Evelina does not evolve into the second definition of innocence, but rather she continues her journey apart from her ancestors in being moral and virtuous. The function of innocence’s duality in the text seems to further

Introduced to us in the throes of labor, Caroline Evelyn is immediately rendered impure in her life. She dies in childbirth without any proof of her marriage to Sir John Belmont, essentially bastardizing her child, Evelina. Caroline Evelyn is described as innocent or guiltless, to contrast the innocence of Evelina that is stated just a few paragraphs down, “I send her to you innocent as an angel.” A contrast is immediately drawn between Evelina’s type of innocence and her mother’s. Caroline Evelyn is guiltless in the circumstances that ended her life, while Evelina is innocent and pure, in spite of her circumstances in life. Furthermore, John Evelyn left his infant daughter, Caroline Evelyn, under Mr. Villar’s care on his deathbed as well, directly paralleling Evelina’s own circumstances to that of her mother’s. Thus the innocence and morality that Villars projects onto Evelina throughout the text connotes a new

Evelina is innocent of any wrongs, as well as guilt, but she has no reason to foster guilt in the first place. Just as Caroline Evelyn is guiltless in leaving her daughter a bastard, Evelina continues to be a solely innocent being, in terms of morality and virtue, rather than of circumstance. Her eventual marriage to Lord Orville and legitimization under the Belmont name keeps her virtue intact and in turn, makes Mr. Villar’s third attempt at moral guidance a success. In Mr. Villars’ last letter to Evelina, he writes (hopes) that her ending is as “equally propitious” as his. Propitious, meaning favorable or auspicious, further strengthens the notion that Evelina’s continual morality throughout the novel is an ode to the success of Mr. Villar’s in his role as her moral guardian, as well as her eventual deviation from the patterns which burdened the line of Eve that came before