Evelina's Name

Published in the fiscal year 1778, Evelina is a novel that depicts an orphan girl’s desire to develop her writing career. The girl desperately looks for someone who can give her a name and launch her to a great position in the world. Since the essay is written by the author, the entire novel is based on her perspective on identity (Greenfield 1).  This essay seeks to look into how Evelina illustrates authorship and her argument on how identity and literature are gifts associated to women.

On the surface, the story seems to depict a heroine, who desires to have a name that is patriarchal. According to the article, Evelina’s search for title, power and identity have been able to come from her mother’s lineage. This is depicted when Evelina met his prodigal father. When Evelina gave his father the letter that came from her mother, her father stated that she resembled her mother. Evelina desired a moment when her father would call her child (Greenfield 2). However, the article argues that this is not supposed to be so. This is because of her dead mother whose resemblance she is bearing. The story has been split into the independence that the consciousness of a woman bears and respect to the authority that men possess. . The article depicts how in efforts to portray a woman’s creativity, the author has been able to undermine the values in the society.

According to the article, the author had to hide her words from her daddy. Additionally, she desired to keep herself far away from her father’s name. The author gives an example of how she burnt her novels so that her father could not hold her in a low self-esteem. Because of the low self-esteem, the author states that Burney assumed that her father did not like novels. This is because her father’s entire library had only one book. From the article, we understand that Burney’s father was the censor of her writings. The article reveals that Burney wrote the novel Evelina in secret. In addition, she was able to arrange for it publication anonymously. Burney not only wanted not to be disobedient to her father but also she did not desire that her father read the novel (Greenfield 3). Furthermore, the article illustrates how Burney desired to remove her name from her writing because her father was not able to know the book’s name. In addition, the article depicts that, by the time the book Evelina was being published, there was personal significance in namelessness. From Burney’s writings, we understand that for a woman to have her own writing, she must be cut off from her father’s language. In addition, she must be nameless. Burney argues that for a woman to go up to authorship, they must be a fall of the paternal dominance. I tend to agree with this point because the domination of men in the society has subdued the greatness that women possess. Mostly, women look down on themselves because of being neglected by the men who mean a lot to them.