Between Women: Frances Burney’s The Wanderer

Abstract

BETWEEN WOMEN: FRANCES BURNEY’S THE WANDERER ANDREA AUSTIN Queen’s University F a n n y Burney is best known for her portraits of young ingenues: the adolescent Evelina, in particular, but also the suggestible Camilla and the harried heiress, Cecilia. The Wanderer (1814), Burney’s last work, promises to cover much the same ground as her other novels, as its subtitle sug­ gests a concern with the cruel and arbitrary exercise of male authority over women — “Female Difficulties.” Yet the subtitle’s suggestion of a shared female condition also signals a preoccupation with bonds between women, bonds that become overwhelmingly more important in this novel than do the women’s relationships with men; whereas the courtship-minded ingenues move in a world of paternal figures, The Wanderer’s steely heroine, Juliet, moves in a society that is predominantly female. Indeed, The Wanderer actually derives its energy — its raison d’être — from the intense and impas­ sioned conflict of the two main characters, Juliet and Elinor. At the end of her career, Burney tells a story that functions as feminist theory, a story in which she constructs a model of female homosocial rivalry. “ ‘Homosocial,’ ” Eve Sedgwick explains in Between Men: English Litera­ ture and Male Homosocial Desire, “is a word occasionally used in history and the social sciences, where it describes social bonds between persons of the same sex; it is a neologism, obviously formed by analogy with ‘homosexual,’ and just as obviously meant to be distinguished from ‘homosexual’ ” (1). The basic operations Sedgwick outlines in her description of male homoso­ ciality are how bonds between men form the cement of society, how militant heterosexuality becomes coupled with intense homophobia, and how not just male solidarity but also male conflict works to subjugate women. Further, Sedgwick argues that the “opposition between the ‘homosocial’ and the ‘ho­ mosexual’ seems to be much less thorough and dichotomous for women, in our society, than for men” (2). However, although this observation has some truth to it, the logic can be taken too far; Sedgwick concludes that “women in our society who love women, women who teach, study, nurture, suckle, write about, march for, vote for, give jobs to, or otherwise promote the interests of other women, are pursuing congruent and closely related activities” (2-3). This reasoning reflects a tendency among critics to devalue female conflict, English Stu d ies in C a n a d a , 22, 3, September 1996 treating it only as an unproductive stumbling block, an obstacle to be over­ come. In fact, while the theme of female friendship has been much studied, conflict between women within fictional texts often meets with general dis­ approbation from feminist critics, who see it as an illustration of women’s complicity with their own oppression.1 The positive portrayals of female conflict in The Wanderer may, then, have much to do with why Burney’s final novel has been so undervalued. Certainly, the tyrannical society ladies of Brighthelmstone support a view of The Wanderer as a depiction of the tendency of patriarchy to turn women against each other.2 The society ladies persecute Juliet because she lacks a paternal surname. At the same time, Juliet’s idealized friendships with her half sister, Aurora, and her old school friend, Gabriella, turn on the plot device of Juliet’s assumption of her rightful patronym. The women’s friend­ ships operate within the bounds prescribed by patriarchy — at least, as long as the heroine’s attachments to her friends do not rival her attachment to the hero, as Juliet’s do not. Her competitive relationship with Elinor, how­ ever, is an entirely different story. If the two women’s rivalry cannot be said to operate outside patriarchy, it at least operates in opposition to it, unlike the novel’s other instances of female relations. While her friend and her half sister fail to make an active, economic difference in the heroine’s life, Elinor is the one who takes the Incognita into her house, finds a position for her when Juliet needs work, and raises money on her behalf. Similarly, Elinor is the one who scorns the society ladies’ insistence on patriarchal law — on...