"Never, Most Certainly Never, Can I Perform in Public": Juliet and the Shame of Visibility in Burney's The Wanderer
Kristin M. Distel, Ohio University
Author Biography
Kristin M. Distel holds a PhD in English literature from Ohio University, where she defended her dissertation, 鈥淕endered Shame, Female Subjectivity, and the Rise of the Eighteenth-Century Novel.鈥� She has presented at the University of Oxford, the University of Manchester, and the Sorbonne, and she has recently published articles and book chapters on Toni Morrison, Theodore Roethke, Stella Gibbons, Kate Chopin, Larry Levis, Natasha Trethewey, Phillis Wheatley, and Mather Byles. Her articles on Samuel Richardson and Eliza Haywood are forthcoming.
Abstract
This essay proposes that in The Wanderer, Juliet鈥檚 shame is inextricably linked with her poverty and her ambiguous national identity; because she is not readily identifiable as English when she meets elite Englishwomen in the novel鈥檚 opening chapters, she becomes an object of derision and thus suffers shame. Juliet鈥檚 shame and otherness are particularly evident in the proposed harp concert. She must make herself visible, calling special attention to her gender and class since her national ambiguity deprives her of protection and renders her vulnerable to people who would expose her to the public eye. This essay considers the important roles that the Admiral and Harleigh play in outlining the qualities expected of Englishwomen during this moment of national crisis and concludes by arguing that the novel endorses the humiliation of Elinor. As a supporter of the French Revolution and professed lover of Harleigh, Elinor鈥檚 interruption of Juliet鈥檚 concert reinscribes her shamelessness and her failure to display normative English femininity.
Keywords
Burney, Frances, 1752-1840; The Wanderer; shame; gender; nationalism; French Revolution; novel; visibility; England; France; performance; class
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