Book contents
- British Women Satirists in the Long Eighteenth Century
- British Women Satirists in the Long Eighteenth Century
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Traditions and Breaks
- Part II Publicity and Print Culture
- Chapter 6 Women’s Satires of the Literary Marketplace in Eighteenth-Century England
- Chapter 7 Charlotte Lennox, Satirical Poetry, and the Rise of Participatory Democracy
- Chapter 8 Jane Collier’s Satirical Fable
- Chapter 9 Hiding in Plain Sight
- Part III Moral Debates and Satiric Dialogue
- Appendix Selected List of Eighteenth-Century Women Writers and Their Satiric Works
- Selected Bibliography and Guide to Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 9 - Hiding in Plain Sight
Frances Burney as Satiric Novelist
from Part II - Publicity and Print Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2022
- British Women Satirists in the Long Eighteenth Century
- British Women Satirists in the Long Eighteenth Century
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Traditions and Breaks
- Part II Publicity and Print Culture
- Chapter 6 Women’s Satires of the Literary Marketplace in Eighteenth-Century England
- Chapter 7 Charlotte Lennox, Satirical Poetry, and the Rise of Participatory Democracy
- Chapter 8 Jane Collier’s Satirical Fable
- Chapter 9 Hiding in Plain Sight
- Part III Moral Debates and Satiric Dialogue
- Appendix Selected List of Eighteenth-Century Women Writers and Their Satiric Works
- Selected Bibliography and Guide to Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Modern scholars have achieved consensus that Frances Burney was writing satire in her novels, acknowledging the range of Burney’s satiric targets and tones, and the merging and submerging of her satire with comedy, irony, melodrama, and sentimentalism. Yet Burney’s contemporary reviewers did not identify Burney as a satirist. In fairness, satire defies easy definition, and the status of satiric fiction when Burney was writing at the end of the eighteenth century was far less secure than at the beginning of the period. Furthermore, satire was gendered as male at the time; women were seen as the targets of satire, not its practitioners. So even when Burney’s reviewers and readers did recognize satiric elements in her work, she was seen as a sentimental novelist, a didactic novelist, a romantic novelist – as anything but a satirist. And Burney did not identify herself as a satirist either. In doing so, Burney was passing – hiding in plain sight as a satirist, defying the conventions of women writers and novelists of her time.
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- British Women Satirists in the Long Eighteenth Century , pp. 172 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022