Final Project Prospectus - Lady Mary's Travel Blog

Melanie and I are interested in working with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters. We thought of ways we could bring her experience “to life” for a 21^st century reader. Lady Mary recorded her experiences and later crafted these recordings into epistles. We decided we will have Lady Mary blog and tweet her experiences as if she was traveling in the 21st century. This is why we decided that our digital project would mostly consist of a travel blog and that we would experiment with various medias, like Twitter, YouTube, and Google maps, to track Lady Mary’s travels to and in Turkey. We will use a 21^st century “voice” while making sure that all the facts and details remain true to the letters.

In the travel blog, we will devote a small portion to blogging Lady Mary’s travels in Europe before she arrives in Turkey. The rest of the blogs will be detailed accounts of her adventures in Turkey. In these blogs, we will add links to any images, music samples, information, etc., that Lady Mary references so that readers can see and hear what Lady Mary would have experienced herself. The blogs will be “reflections” of Lady Mary’s trip, whereas Twitter will be more of an “in the moment” experience. We will be using the letters in the edition we’ve been reading for class.

We feel that this project is necessary because from a 21^st century reader’s perspective, it’s difficult to comprehend an 18^th century experience without understanding the references being made. We know that Lady Mary traveled around a lot, so we want to track where she traveled, which places she visits, the people she meets, the music she hears, the food she eats, the art she sees, etc., in order to visualize her travels. When we visualize Lady Mary’s travels within a 21^st century medium, we’re allowing her experiences to come to life in the way that we would understand traveling today. Our project then might bring light to an experience that has been only read in the past, and not “experienced” interactively. This is why we think this project is uniquely suited for an Internet environment. The English discipline is headed towards a very digital future, and the way we are reading today is different from how we have read in the past. We hope that by bringing Lady Mary’s experience to “life” in a way that 21^st century readers would understand it, we draw awareness to the fact that 18^th century novels were also forms of experience for contemporary readers. Lady Mary’s record of her travels is equivalent to the 21^st century travel blog.

We’ve done some research and we couldn’t find anything similar to our project. We couldn’t even find a Lady Mary literary profile on Twitter…except someone apparently named their cat after Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and created a Twitter account for her – and she is now following us on Twitter. We’re still angry at the cat for taking our username!

Please see Melanie’s blog post for more information on this project! :) 

The Epistolary Form and the Act of Copying in Francis Burney's Evelina

Since our last class meeting, I became more interested in the epistolary form of Evelina. We wondered why Francis Burney’s Evelina is an epistolary novel and whether telling a story in letters implies the story is more truthful. Nonetheless, the letterform is an art form. There are many instances in Evelina that reveal epistolary writing as a craft, but I am especially interested in the act of “copying.”

There is a moment in the novel where Evelina admits to “copying” a note into one of her letters. In letter XXVII, Evelina inserts a note written to her by Lord Orville. The act of “copying” begs some attention. I think it calls forth the idea that writing is a craft, and even letter writing is an art form driven by intention and conscious choices. Evelina admits to copying Lord Orville’s words into the letter herself: “What a letter! how has my proud heart swelled every line I have copied!” (214). Perhaps I am influenced by my own 21^st century bias when I say that the act of copying is not an act I necessarily trust. I don’t think it’s because I feel that Evelina is a deceitful character, but because I can’t assume that what Evelina has copied is what was actually there. She admits that her “heart swelled” as she copied every line, which makes me question whether her excitement hindered her from possibly “copying” correctly.

Whether Evelina really copied Lord Orville’s note as he had written it (if he had written one at all) or not, seems less important to me than the actual act of copying. The act of copying throws me out of this mindset where I assume that letters are indeed reflections of interiority and thus, reflections of truth and instead, draws awareness to the craft of letter writing. This in turn puts Evelina in a position of authority because she is a conscious character, making authorial decisions and moving the plot forward.

I think that 18^th century novels, and especially those we have read this semester, have complicated my notion of “truth.” If we think back to Lady Mary’s letters, for example, we know that the letters she writes to friends and family back home were just notes she recorded from her experiences that she later turned into epistles. The events occurred, but how Lady Mary or Evelina choose to craft the events seem more important to me than the events themselves. 

Self-Signing in Frances Burney's Evelina

I’m really interested in female authenticity in Frances Burneys Evelina. I want to focus particularly on how Evelina “signs” herself in the epistolary novel.

First, it’s interesting to note that Burney decides to title the novel, Evelina. This awards agency and importance to a female character. We’ve only seen a similar maneuver once this semester with Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko. Oroonoko, however, is not the agent of his own story; Behn is his agent, writing his history for him. In Burney’s novel, however, Evelina’s authorial voice emerges in a society that often ensnares women within its social conventions. This is not to imply that Evelina wholly liberates herself from social convention, but towards the end, as is indicated by the way in which she signs her name, she has assumed some sort of validity of self. I will end this blog post by discussing this maneuver, and the complexity of it.

But I’d like to direct our attention to the opening of the novel. We do not actually meet Evelina at this point. Instead, we read letters written by people who assume to know what is best for Evelina. Mr. Villars insists that Evelina’s parting from him creates “apprehensions and terrors which almost overpower” him (Burney 12). Lady Howard, however, claims that “sequestering” children from the world creates a false image of the world as a paradise to them; they only learn its reality by experiencing it (13). Evelina’s voice is severed from this discussion because she is not in the authority to decide for herself, but remains within paternal control.

Evelina’s first letter (letter VIII) illustrates how she is beginning to explore this idea of self-definition, yet is still confined to authority, specifically male authority. She ends her letter saying, “Your Evelina. I cannot to you sign Anville and what other name may I claim?” indicating her search for female authenticity. Nonetheless, she is still someone else’s Evelina. In the same letter, she portrays her sense of awareness to the idea that female writing is attached to morality when she equates her pen to her thoughts. She says, “my pen – or rather my thoughts” thus indicating that what she writes is an extension of her thoughts, and her thoughts are indicative of her morality (18). This is a concept we also see emerge in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, where Pamela’s letters become records of her chastity and morality. Thus Evelina's identity is attached to her letters, and this manifests itself in a variety of ways (some instances she signs herself and in others, she refrains from doing so, thus presenting a complication in this concept of identity and letter writing).

I also find it interesting that Evelina is sometimes referred to in the third person. In letter XV, Mr. Villar says, “I had intended to have deferred writing, till I heard of her return to Howard Grove” (45). Although he writes this letter to Evelina, he nonetheless refers to her in the third person. Moreover, in letter XVIII, Mr. Orville says to Evelina, “And does Miss Anville feel no concern at the idea of the many mourners her absence will occasion?” (60). He then says, “I do think, that whoever has once seen Miss Anville, must receive an impression never to be forgotten” (60).  Mr. Villar and Mr. Orville are not directly speaking to Evelina; this concerns me because it seems that by referring to her in the third person, these male characters are distancing her and blurring her relevance to the conversation. Her identity is in the third person. Interestingly enough, in this same letter, Evelina defers from signing her name. Not only is she referred to in the third person, but by the end of the letter, she is not there at all. In “Signing Evelina: Female Self-Inscription in the Discourse of Letters,” Samuel Choi comments on Evelina’s signatures: “Evelina’s strategy of using her signatures – and the deferral of them –“ is “to insert herself into events, dialogues, and social structures from which she was previously excluded” (Choi 260). In deferring her signature, is Evelina drawing awareness to the fact that she is blurred from the dialogue? Is this her way to rebel against social standards of the epistolary form, thus assuming control of her own letter writing?

The last letter presents some complexities. Evelina says, “All is over…the fate of your Evelina is decided” (336). I think “All is over” remains somewhat ambiguous. Choi says, “ ‘All is over’ does lend itself to sad if not sinister undertones- a young, newly-wedded bride’s life described as “over” could easily suggest the sort of marriage ‘trap’ ”(261). What exactly is over? Evelina’s independence? And yet, Evelina’s letter is the last one of the novel. I think Burney gives Evelina authority in this sense; whereas in the beginning Evelina was distanced and discussed by others (similar to the instances of third person narration), in the end, she stands on her own. This is further illustrated in the way she signs her last letter, simply “Evelina” (Burney 337). She is no longer anyone’s Evelina (hence, the absence of “Your”). Her words and her name conclude the novel and stand on their own, as we don’t get a refute/reply from anyone else. Different from her initial exploration of self-definition, Evelina indicates a sense of self-authority when in the end, she simply signs, “Evelina.” 

Choi, Samuel. "Signing Evelina: Female Self-Inscription in the Discourse of Letters." Studies in the Novel 31.3 (1999): 259-78. ProQuest. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.