‘Your own duplicity has instructed me to feel’: On Eugenia Tyrold in Frances Burney’s ‘Camilla’
This blog post discusses the brilliant and tragic character of Eugenia Tyrold in Frances Burney’s Camilla, focusing on — through the characters in the novel and the author herself — the themes of love and betrayal, gender and education, and beauty and disability, and how they all relate to each other in this eighteenth-century novel to create the affecting and overwhelming storyline of Burney’s most beautiful character.
I’ve been meaning to write — or ramble on about — this for some time, particularly with how briefly I mentioned her in my blog post on Frances Burney (1752–1840) from last November, as I wanted to avoid spoilers, but in turn, ended up saying very little about her at all. And she’s my favourite Burney character, she needs to be written about more.
Frances Burney’s Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth (1796) was the first of her novels that I read, beginning a years’ long interest in her life and literary works. I struggle to think of which novel of hers to recommend first to others if they want to read her work (I’m ashamed to admit I know a lot less about her plays, but the wider world shares much of that shame too, with them having hardly been in production, and some not at all); Cecilia (1782) is, in my opinion, the fastest in pace (I read the last one hundred pages in a day in a frenzy akin to the titular character’s), The Wanderer (1814) is the most politically interesting and unique of her four novels — though is also, like all of them, problematic in parts, which I mention in my blog post on Burney. Evelina (1778), her first and most famous novel, is also great, with its particular charm and balance between light and dark, and Camilla, well… that has Eugenia…
But before I go further, to restate, of course these kinds of books — and their adapted period pieces, like what has rightfully been levelled against Netflix’s Bridgerton over the last two years — have more than plenty about them to criticise: the very white and wealthy societies in which the characters and their authors live, as one example, and by extension what is and isn’t shown in the work (as I also discuss in the aforementioned blog post). None of Burney’s novels have been adapted at all — sadly forever in the shadows of the women writers who followed, most notably Jane Austen… but better to be in the shadow of another woman than yet another man — and I don’t really think the world needs another such period piece, so I’m not going to push for that idea here (or maybe I should?). Though feminist academic Margaret Doody’s point about wishing for the protagonist of Burney’s fourth and final novel The Wanderer to actually be a Black woman would been great, and would make a good adaptation of the work. (But better still would be to amplify such stories anyway, rather than continuing year after year to focus on — albeit lesser known — white authors.) Nonetheless, Burney still needs more recognition, and I don’t at all mean to undercut the significance of her as an early and influential woman writer in the eighteenth century. She has a place in my heart.
‘A Family Scene’: Establishing the Story
Camilla is both a simple and complicated novel; simple in that its plot is merely concerned with the matrimonial prospects of four young girls, but complicated in how it goes about telling it. It carries the spirit of romanticism throughout its nine-hundred pages, and strikes the perfect balance between comedy and tragedy, while being filled with intrigue, mystery, a sense of magical realism, and a deep gothic element to its imagery.
Camilla Tyrold is the titular character, the middle, seventeen-year-old daughter of a country parson. She has two sisters: Lavinia, who’s two years older and Eugenia who’s two years younger. The three sisters have an older brother too, the mischievous Lionel who spends part of the novel away at Oxford University. Living with them as a ward is the pompously named Edgar Mandlebert, the love interest for Camilla throughout the novel. The Tyrold children’s cousin, of the same age as Camilla, is the fourth girl in the story, the traditionally beautiful Indiana Lynmere, who Edgar is planned to marry for much of the novel. Her brother Clermont, at the start of the current storyline, is away on his Grand Tour.
The novel begins with a few chapters of backstory, a kind of prologue, with the opening chapter ‘A Family Scene’ setting much of the picture. Sir Hugh — the young characters’ baronet uncle, residing over the family estate in Yorkshire — decides to move closer to his brother as his health is beginning to fail ‘in the meridian of his life.’ He decides to alter his priorities, no longer able to pursue the social life he once lived, and begins to seek out a tutor to try to gain some worldly education that his life has been lacking: he ‘knew no more of hic, hæc, hoc, than the baby unborn.’ (‘Hic, hæc, hoc’ being a reference to Latin, and so by extension the classical education of wealthy boys at this time.) He moves to a rural estate in Hampshire that’s near to his brother’s parsonage and finds a tutor, Dr Orkborne. After a short time, Sir Hugh finds that this pursuit of education just isn’t for him but doesn’t want to offend the academic by sending him away so soon, so tries to think of a way for him to stay employed at his estate.
Meanwhile, Sir Hugh grows closer to his brother’s children — while being the guardian of their late sister’s two children, Indiana and Clermont — and develops a particular fondness towards Camilla, so much so that he makes her the heiress of his estate and requests to raise her in his household. Upon her tenth birthday, she is to move in with him.
When the day arrives, the ‘gay little party,’ consisting of her, her brother and sisters, her cousin Indiana and the family ward Edgar, travel to Sir Hugh’s estate, all smiles and laughter… until… Lionel suggests that the group attend a local fair. Sir Hugh, more than willing to continue enjoying the company of his family of ‘little gigglers,’ approves of the idea, and the group continue to the fair. However, Camilla grows uneasy as they travel, finally admitting to her uncle amidst tears and sympathetic gestures from her younger sister, that she’d promised their mother that the group wouldn’t leave their uncle’s estate. Little Eugenia is only eight years old and, because she had been a sickly child, had not yet been inoculated against smallpox out of fear that the vaccination would do her even more harm. Sir Hugh immediately understands and promises to turn the group’s carriage around that instant, but then Lionel, insistent on going to the fair, races off, leaving their uncle no choice but to all go after him — so they will not be split up — and bring him back with them to his estate. ‘But do not let us get out of the coach, uncle,’ Lavinia pleads. ‘Pray do not let us get out!’
When they arrive, Sir Hugh insists that the rest of them should go into the fair — to enjoy themselves for a moment, to get some fresh air — while Eugenia waits behind with him. She wishes to join her sisters, however, as, after all, this would be yet another countless instance in her childhood where she’d been excluded owing to her poor health. Moved by his niece’s distress, he lets her join the party. Eugenia is overjoyed: ‘Her grief now gave way to ecstasy, and her little hands could soon scarcely sustain the loaded skirt of her white frock.’
She walks into a booth filled with toys and trinkets when suddenly a boy enters. Eugenia, showing her isolation, asks what is the matter with his face, which alerts Sir Hugh to the ‘dreaded sight’: a poor boy recently recovered from smallpox. In a frenzied panic, the group rush Eugenia out of the booth and into the carriage as quickly as they can. (Edgar offers to go and find Lionel.)
To keep spirits high in the days following, Sir Hugh organises for the children to return to his estate and play in his garden. As far as they’re all concerned, Eugenia has thankfully escaped contracting smallpox, but Sir Hugh has grown deeply protective of her, blaming himself for the incident at the fair. His protection is so much that he won’t let her play on the children’s makeshift seesaw (built from a plank placed on top of a cut tree trunk). In the end, he lets her play but only while he’s with her, and so with the two of them on one side, he insists as many of the children as possible try to sit on the other side. As the pair rise from the ground, Sir Hugh, in a giddy and distracted state, loosens his group of Eugenia, who falls hard onto the ground. Again in a panic, her uncle tries to reach for her but in doing so, falls on top of her. She cries out in agony, and continues to cry in pain as she’s carried inside and examined by the doctor.
After the doctor has relocated her shoulder and one of her knees, she falls asleep exhausted and in pain, with her mother by her side. And then a fever sets in. They had acted too late at the fair. Her smallpox symptoms grow worse. Sir Hugh’s guilt and depression escalates.
Little Eugenia’s health continues to decline until all fear the worst…
But then over time, miraculously, she begins to recover. Both guilt-ridden and joyous for her recovery, Sir Hugh now names her the heiress of his estate and, to provide for his nephew Clermont, proposes a marriage between him and Eugenia. Consequently, Eugenia is to grow up here, away from her sisters. To make up for the lack of beauty Eugenia is thought to possess, and to give Dr Orkborne employment, Sir Hugh calls for Eugenia to have a male education, unlike that of her sisters and cousin, under the tutelage of his short-time classics scholar. This plan is undertaken with Clermont in mind: Eugenia’s education is to be for his benefit, he’s to have a wife he can engage with intellectually if he can’t have a ‘beautiful’ wife.
(It would be amiss not to mention Eugenia’s deformities in relation to her race and social class. Essaka Joshua discusses this by noting that her family intend to use their considerable wealth to minimise the burdens of her deformity, which is of deep importance to the family because it impacts upon the marital prospects of its youngest member, a ‘white woman of high social rank.’ Her uncle makes her his heir, with this idea of financial alleviation so succinctly put by him in the line, ‘a guinea for every pit in that poor face will I settle on her out of hand.’ Even during one of the most crucial and distressing scenes in Eugenia’s story — discussed below in the section on disability — is her family’s wealth and social rank used to (though too late) somewhat quieten the harassment directed at her.)
These two incidents disable Eugenia — mark her as Different, Other — for the rest of her life. Her ‘whole figure [is] diminutive and deformed’: she is scarred by smallpox, one of her legs is shorter than the other so she walks with a pronounced limp, and her growth is stunted, presumably being around three feet tall at fifteen years of age. (This means that the part of Thomas Gainsborough’s oil painting that’s used for the cover of my copy is inaccurate as the four girls are shown to be of similar heights. However, for Eugenia to be the near invisible character in the background remains an incredibly evocative image.)
‘The poor Eugenia for his wife!’: Love and Betrayal
Most of the work that’s been done by scholars and literary critics on Eugenia focuses on her education and disability, which are no doubt defining parts of her character — I mean, that’s what the following two sections of this blog post will discuss too — but the other pivotal part to her character, which relates to these other aspects of her, is her presence in the narrative’s interconnected love story. While the two sections below focus more specifically on certain parts of the story, for this section, we’ll need to go through the entirety of Eugenia’s storyline in Camilla. So, let’s get going…
It’s a given for Eugenia that she’ll marry her cousin Clermont one day — somebody she has never met — with her being directed towards a classical education for this sole reason.
One day, the group — Camilla, Eugenia, Lionel, Indiana, and Edgar — attend a raffle in a nearby town. In the shop is ‘a well dressed elegant young man’ reading from poet James Thomson’s The Seasons, often exclaiming aloud to any who will listen. Eugenia is intrigued, standing on her tiptoes to hear him. She hopes it’s her cousin Clermont, her agreed-upon future husband. However, Lionel recognises the man to be a friend from university, Frederic Melmond, and is surprised to see him in the area. When Melmond finishes his recital, he looks across the room and notices Eugenia’s cousin, Indiana. He’s enraptured. Speaking to Lionel, he says:
Are not those eyes all soul? Does not that mouth promise every thing that is intelligent? Can those lips ever move but to diffuse sweetness and smiles? I must not look at her again! another glance may set me raving!
And so begins his book-long unrequited adoration of Indiana, and Eugenia’s of Melmond, admiring his intellect and deep love of literature, an academic equal to herself. But things more complicated than a love triangle soon emerge.
The evening before, the group had been at a ball. As expected, the mere presence of Eugenia with her family was noticed by the society around, who began exchanging ‘confused murmur[s]’ and found the sight of her amusing and ridiculous. I should say here, importantly, Eugenia has been raised by a family who has tried to shield her from other’s opinions — much like she was shielded as a child owing to her poor health — meaning she isn’t aware of her Otherness, and so dismisses these quiet taunts as she doesn’t realise they’re directed at her. Edgar had asked to dance with her, and so she does, before later asking Camilla. (The typical tension between Camilla and Edgar then appears, as it does continually throughout the story.) In the end, he danced with Indiana, leaving Camilla and Eugenia sat to the side. Out of nowhere, a gentleman ‘eminently distinguished by personal beauty’ then appeared and, ‘to the surprise of them all,’ asked Eugenia to dance. The pair danced the following morning too, at a public breakfast before the raffle. Observers commented on her and her dancing, referring to her as ‘the little lame duck’ and ‘that limping little body,’ in the consistently dehumanising sentiment common to any disabled person.
That night after the raffle, a letter is delivered to Sir Hugh’s estate. It’s addressed to the governess, Miss Margland, and states the writer’s wishes to begin a communication with Miss Eugenia Tyrold. (Am I sounding eighteenth-century enough?) It’s from the man who had danced with her that morning and the previous evening, a man called Alphonso Bellamy. Of course the idea of a betrothal enters the minds of Sir Hugh and Miss Margland but it’s quickly dismissed as this man is a stranger, and besides, Eugenia’s already betrothed. Eugenia herself feels uneasy about this, wondering how it might affect the arrangements between her and a cousin she hasn’t met or know if she’ll be liked by. But there’s one pleasure in all of this, even if ‘half conscious [and] scarce admitted’: a quiet belief that Eugenia herself has the power to inspire a stranger to write such a letter. My girl!
She declines his proposal, however, after all the family discuss it, writing in response:
To Alphonso Bellamy, Esq.
SIR,
I am highly sensible to the honour of your partiality, which I regret it is not possible for me to deserve. Be not, therefore, offended, and still less suffer yourself to be afflicted, when I confess I have only my poor thanks to offer, and poor esteem to return, for your unmerited goodness. Dwell not, sir, upon this disappointment, but receive my best wishes for your restored happiness; for never can I forget a distinction to which I have so little claim. Believe me,
Sir,
Your very much obliged,
and most grateful humble servant,
EUGENIA TYROLD.
Bellamy persists, however, and in fact the whole family meet him that Sunday at church (where Eugenia catches herself gazing at Melmond). As the group leaves, they find themselves in a field with a raging bull, which gives Bellamy the perfect opportunity to try to protect Eugenia in front of her whole family. Sir Hugh is thankful for this, but continues to insist he doesn’t much want Bellamy around (having entirely decided against the idea of marriage between this stranger and his niece).
The novel continues as such, with Bellamy trying to get close to Eugenia. A secret correspondence begins between them as he starts writing letters to her, paying the young daughter of a poor tenant of Sir Hugh’s to deliver his letters.
The secrecy of Bellamy’s letters, her affection for Melmond, and her fate with Clermont all escalate in Eugenia’s mind:
‘Alas!’ cried she, ‘what a conflict is mine! I must refuse a man who adores me to distraction, in disregard of my unhappy defects, to cast myself under the guidance of one who, perhaps, may estimate beauty so highly as to despise me for its want!’
With tears in her eyes thinking about the emotional distress Bellamy says he’s in — that he wanders day and night without stopping to eat or rest, agonising over waiting for a response from his new beloved — she writes her own secret letters, wishing for his happiness but insisting that he must leave her. He doesn’t listen to her, however, writing back his demand to meet her in person and for her to say what she means to say in person (‘to pronounce verbally his doom’).
Bellamy later appears outside of Sir Hugh’s estate, even for Camilla and Edgar to see him. Edgar puts together an idea that Bellamy — being generally distrusted by the family for suddenly appearing and writing to Eugenia, and no doubt her Otherness contributes to this distrust as no man could surely want to marry her — has been planning to capture Eugenia unnoticed and run off with her, to potentially elope and secure the fortune she’ll inherit. Eugenia doesn’t see Bellamy this way, though, for she doesn’t see his advances towards her as unusual, unlike her family. Plus, this is the only man that has ever expressed any interest towards her, why should Eugenia think this to be any different? (‘From whom should I dread violence? from a man who — but too fatally for his peace — values me more than his life?’)
Soon after, Bellamy reappears once more. At a horse race, he approaches the family and — according to the narrator and the suspicions of the other characters — tries to whisper to Eugenia that if she comes with him to see his carriage, he’ll take this as proof of her wanting him to leave her alone and will ride away at once, never to be seen again. Edgar remains suspicious of him, however, and keeps him from talking with Eugenia. Edgar then shares his fears with Sir Hugh, further cementing the family’s — but not their youngest daughter’s — distrust of him. Sir Hugh then writes to his nephew to return from Europe as quickly as he can, to finally ‘put into execution’ his plan of marrying Eugenia to him, to save her from this stranger. In his letter, he outlines these intentions to Clermont:
Now, this prize is no other than your cousin Eugenia Tyrold, whom I don’t tell you is a beauty; but if you are the sensible lad I take you for, you won’t think the worse of her for wanting such frail perfections. […] So I beg you to come over with all convenient speed, for fear of her falling a prey to some sharper, many such being to be found; especially at horse-races, and so forth.
Eugenia knew this day would come, but not as quickly as it did, and not in the way it had: fuelled by the predatory intentions of a man now widely believed to be in pursuit of her inheritance (‘a mere fortune-hunter’), a man she thought was genuinely in love with her.
**
And so Eugenia and her family wait for Clermont to arrive. (Lionel can’t wait any longer and has to go back to university, and presumably Melmond returns too.)
After much agonising and waiting on her and her family’s part, Eugenia goes out for a walk in the park. In a small wood not far from the house, where she intends to sit and read, she notices a young man approaching and immediately recognises him, owing to his ‘foreign air,’ to be Clermont Lynmere, arrived at last. As he gets closer, and without looking at her while she remains seated, he asks, ‘Pray ma’am, do you belong to that house?’ pointing to Sir Hugh’s mansion. She says yes, faintly. He asks if she has seen any of the young ladies of the estate, meaning his sister and cousins, as he has just been told that one of them is in this direction, but can’t find her. Once more, Eugenia is treated as separate from the other girls, totally unrecognisable. So startled by his sudden appearance, Eugenia can only answer his question by pointing to the gate and stammering in response that she thinks the young ladies have gone in that direction.
From the beginning of Clermont’s presence in the novel, it’s clear he’s a deeply cruel and unpleasant man, and not the intellectual man Sir Hugh had thought him to be after his Grand Tour. He’s the obnoxious eighteenth-century equivalent of an entitled ‘gap yah’ guy. When he formally greets his family and becomes aware that the young lady he had spoken to was the Eugenia he’s been promised to marry, he measures his body against her: ‘holding his head high and back, as if measuring his superior height, while every line round his mouth marked that ridicule was but suppressed by contempt.’ His vicious opposition to the marriage is made clear as soon as Eugenia’s intelligence is mentioned:
‘My nephew little suspects,’ cried Sir Hugh, winking, ‘Eugenia belongs to the scholars! Ten to one but he thinks he’s got Homer and Horace to himself! But here, my dear boy, as you’re so fond of the classics’ —
Clermont, nimbly rising, and knocking down a decanter of water in his haste, but not turning back to look at it, nor staying to offer any apology, affected not to hear his uncle, and flung hastily out of the room, calling upon Indiana to follow him.
‘In the name of all the Diavoli,’ cried he, pulling her into the park with him, ‘what does all this mean? Is the old gentleman non compos? what’s all this stuff he descants upon so freely, of scholars, and classics, and Homer, and Horace?’
‘O you must ask Eugenia, not me!’ answered Indiana, scornfully.
‘Why, what does Eugenia know of the matter?’
‘Know? why every thing. She’s a great scholar, and has been brought up by Dr. Orkborne; and she talks Greek and Latin.’
‘Does she so? then, by the Lord! She’s no wife of mine! I’d as soon marry the old Doctor himself! and I’m sure he’d make me as pretty a wife. Greek and Latin! why I’d as soon tie myself to a rod.’
Eugenia pleads to Sir Hugh to call off their marriage, but he insists that Clermont’s only expressing his taste, which is surely allowed and expected in a man as widely travelled as he is, and that ‘he may have some meaning in it that we can’t understand.’ Her father then expresses his own worries about the match, which Sir Hugh slowly internalises now that another patriarch has expressed a similar view.
He later talks to his nephew about the match, to which Clermont again protests, crying ‘and what have I to do with marrying a girl like a boy? That’s not my taste, my dear sir, I assure you. Besides, what has a wife to do with the classics? will they shew her how to order her table? I suppose when I want to eat, I may go to a cook’s shop!’ In this outburst, Sir Hugh finally sees his nephew for who he is and thankfully for Eugenia, puts an end to his plan.
Once Clermont ‘joyfully’ accepts this, Sir Hugh calls for his niece and tells her everything that’s just happened (for this is all new information to the uncle).
Eugenia, at this intimation, felt nearly as much relieved as disturbed. To be refused was, indeed, shocking; not to her pride, she was a stranger to that passion; but to her delicacy, which pointed out to her, in strong colours, the impropriety of having been exposed to such a decision: nevertheless, to find herself unshackled from an alliance to which she looked forward with dread, without offending her uncle, to whom so many reasons made it dear, or militating against her own heroic sentiments of generosity, which revolted against wilfully depriving her cousin of an inheritance already offered to him, removed a weight from her mind, which his every word, look, and gesture, had contributed to increase since their first meeting.
**
Now that Eugenia is no longer tied to Clermont, that’s one less man in her life to worry about (though he remains a horror for others). But what about Melmond and Bellamy?
Melmond remains enamoured of Indiana, having intentions of marrying her one day, all the while Eugenia continues to quietly adore him for their shared love of literature and his sentimentalist side. But one morning, Melmond’s sister, Mrs Berlinton — who quickly becomes a close friend of Camilla’s and with whom they all travel to Southampton, where the story is now taking place at this point — picks up a piece of paper on the stairs which she saw had fallen out of Eugenia’s pocket. She reads its contents:
O Reason! friend of the troubled breast, guide of the wayward fancy, moderator of the flights of hope, and sinkings of despair, Eugenia calls thee!
O! to a feeble, suppliant Maid,
Light of Reason, lend thy aid!
And with thy mild, thy lucid ray,
Point her the way
To genial calm and mental joy!
From Passion far! whose flashes bright
Startle — affright —
Yet ah! invite!
With varying powers attract, repel,
Now fiercely beam,
Now softly gleam,
With magic spell
Charm to consume, win to destroy!
Ah! lead her from the chequer’d glare
So false, so fair! —
Ah, quick from Passion bid her fly,
Its sway repulse, its wiles defy;
And to a feeble, suppliant heart
Thy aid, O Reason’s light, impart!
Next, Eugenia, point thy prayer
That He whom all thy wishes bless,
Whom all thy tenderest thoughts confess,
Thy calm may prove, thy peace may share.
O, if the griefs to him assign’d,
To thee might pass — thy strengthened mind
Would meet all woe, support all pain,
Suffering despise, complaint disdain,
Brac’d with new nerves each ill would brave,
From Melmond but one pang to save!
Though aware of how private yet significant this poem is, Mrs Berlinton passes it to her brother for him to read. He’s admittedly quite distressed but is then touched by realising that Eugenia feels this way about him, the young lady with ‘a mind that seemed so highly cultivated.’ Unlike Clermont, Melmond values Eugenia’s intelligence.
Soon enough, everybody knows about the poem. Eugenia insists on hiding away for the rest of the trip out of embarrassment. Melmond, meanwhile, is conflicted, knowing he doesn’t want to hurt Eugenia but is still in love with her cousin. In the end, he quickly travels to see Eugenia’s father and uncle to express his potential wishes for marrying their daughter as he sees is right. Mr Tyrold consents, so long as Melmond proves himself worthy of the match. But none of this is binding.
Indiana takes it personally that she might lose the interest of Melmond to the likes of her inferior cousin, and so schemes to regain his affection — though, really, Melmond never lost any, he just feels too awkward about everything. Appealing to a man’s unasked-for protection seems the perfect scheme. One day, as the group are boarding a yacht, Indiana notices Melmond offering his hand to her cousin to help her board. Needless to say, Eugenia’s overjoyed (‘she felt in Paradise’)… but it would also be nice, surely, if Melmond could focus and actually help her rather than staring at Indiana. While looking over at her, with ‘her beauty [that] had all its original enchantment,’ she begins to cry out in fear of the waters below, which compels Melmond, once Eugenia has safely crossed, to rush back and help her. He’s so lovesick with her that when she insists he return to her cousin, he interprets this as her playing hard to get, and continues to do so every time he sees her.
Later, the group are dancing. To grab his attention — though she never needs to try — Indiana pretends to become suddenly faint and stops dancing with her partner. Without thought, Melmond flies to her with a glass of water ‘which his trembling hand could scarce hold’ (the kind of lovesick scene we’re all too familiar with in these books and their adapted period pieces). The pair go outside for some air, as Indiana insists she’ll die otherwise. She again makes a reference to the potential pairing of him and her cousin, to which Melmond expresses his conflict about all of this, and cries out his wish of being hers:
O fair, angelic Indiana! in a cottage with you would I have dwelt, more delightedly, and more proudly, than any potentate in the most gorgeous palace: but, alas! from you — formed to enchant all mankind, and add grace to every dignity — from you could I dare ask such a sacrifice? […] most adorable and most adored of women! you know my terrible situation, but you know not the sufferings, nor the constancy of my heart! — the persecution of friends, the pressure of distress, the hopelessness of my idolized Indiana —
Unknown to the pair, Eugenia was standing nearby and had heard the whole thing, ‘pale, petrified, aghast.’ Oh, my girl…
He vainly tries to resolve things; he apologises to Eugenia, compels her to forget him, and then walks away, a mess, leaving the two girls outside, with Eugenia ‘cold, shivering, almost lifeless.’ Camilla finds her younger sister, to whom the heartbroken Eugenia confesses, ‘All is over, my sister, and over for life with Eugenia! Melmond flies and detests me! I am odious in his sight! I am horror to his thoughts!’ She later says to her sister, in the seclusion of her room, sat crying in her bed:
I weep not for my disappointment, great as it may be — and I do not attempt describing it! — it is but my secondary sorrow. I weep, Camilla, for my own infatuation! for the folly, the blindness of which I find myself culpable. O Camilla! is it possible I could ever — for a moment, a single moment, suppose Melmond could willingly be mine! could see his exquisite susceptibility of every thing that is most perfect, yet persuade myself, he could take, by choice, the poor Eugenia for his wife! the mangled, deformed, — unfortunate Eugenia!
Disability Studies scholar Jason Farr writes, regarding this scene, that ‘Eugenia has the intellectual perspective to pull herself out of her melancholia,’ and serves as a tragic example of the connection between these three aspects of her character: love, education, and disability. This kind of rational response to such heartbreak is seen later when, my poor girl, Eugenia even considers sharing her inheritance with Melmond and Indiana if they were to get married, knowing that Melmond has no money to his name. Melmond is touched, though clearly still deeply distressed.
**
The group later go to London after returning from Southampton, and while Camilla is out with her friend Mrs Berlinton, she notices Alphonso Bellamy. She learns that the two know each other, if only for a short time and a while ago. Camilla decides not to tell her younger sister, afraid of the distress this might cause her knowing the rest of their family suspect Bellamy to have malicious intentions. However, Bellamy turns out to be a guest at Mrs Berlinton’s that day, to the surprise of Eugenia, though he doesn’t speak to her. After, Camilla implores her sister not to become reacquainted with the stranger. Hopefully, they think, this brief encounter can be forgotten, and the group spend the evening at the opera. But when they arrive back at the end of the night, the party is one short. Eugenia has gone missing.
While Camilla is in a frenzied agony, Melmond rushes out to find her, but returns at four o’clock in the morning without any idea of where she might be. Camilla frantically writes to her father that their youngest daughter has gone missing and, terrified and panicked, asks what can be done.
It is clear to all what has happened. Bellamy had snuck Eugenia out of the opera, just as he’d planned to do at the horse race, intent on securing her fortune. The man Eugenia had trusted, the man who she was sure wasn’t a threat, the only man to show any apparently genuine interest in her, had abducted her. In considering Eugenia’s perspective on this, Jason Farr, in his PhD thesis ‘Queer Deformities: Disability and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century Women’s Fiction — Haywood, Scott, Burney,’ writes that had Eugenia pursued more traditionally feminine novels, rather than educating herself on ‘masculine’ classical literature, she’d perhaps have been more perceptive to Bellamy’s true intentions through his obviously lovesick letters to her. But instead, owing to her focus on the classics, she ‘views everything in sweeping, epic terms.’ This is discussed more in the section below on education, but needless to say, of course, it’s not her fault.
Melmond sets out at dawn for Gretna Green, having no doubt that this is where Bellamy intends to elope with Eugenia to secure her fortune. Mr Tyrold soon follows, departing from his parsonage in Hampshire.
A week passes, and each moment Camilla grows more terrified. But Melmond returns and tells her that he’s just left Eugenia, and her father too — in fact, the two of them are now together. Though her sister’s safe, what they all feared was true: Bellamy had married Eugenia. Melmond recounts seeing the distraught Eugenia leaving Gretna Green with Bellamy by her side, and her father demanding by what authority he took charge of his daughter, to which Bellamy retorted, ‘By the authority of a husband.’ Nothing could be done. (It’s interesting to note that Mrs Berlinton was shocked at the actions of Bellamy, but thought that in time, Eugenia would be happy in her marriage.)
A letter then arrives from Mr Tyrold that details his account of the chase to Gretna Green: once he had seen his daughter, he demanded to prosecute Alphonso Bellamy for the crime of forced marriage, but Eugenia pleads ‘No, my dear Father, the die is cast! and I am his! Solemn has been my vow! sacred I must hold it!’ My girl! According to Eugenia via her father’s letter, Bellamy’s physical and violent coercion of her away from her family and up to Scotland extended to emotional blackmail, whereby he pulled out a pistol and threatened to kill himself if she didn’t ‘consent’ to the marriage.
Here, Farr concludes his point about Eugenia seeing ‘everything in sweeping, epic terms’: her refusal to break her forced, illegal vows with her abductor stems from her ‘epic virtue,’ her classical, heroic — tragic — belief that a vow is sacred. However, by the end of the story, Farr considers Eugenia’s state of ‘social abjection’ to be viewed by her as a classic epic of her own, and resolutely reads this as her using her classical education — which stems from her disability, her Otherness in the world — to confer her with a sense of power over the horrors she’s been subjected to. In the end, her education isn’t the problem (surely despite the implications of the point above about her being blind to Bellamy’s lovesick letters), it’s her saving grace.
Her family is distraught, there’s nothing they can do. Melmond, too, is racked with anxiety, for he’s thinking constantly of Eugenia, the young lady he deeply admires, but is spending all his time with Indiana who seems to mind a lot less her cousin’s plight. But any disdain he develops for Indiana over this is quickly forgotten when he’s reminded of her beauty. He’s such a silly fool… He does become more resolute, though — thankfully:
but when once he found his goddess had every mortal imperfection, his homage ceased, with amazement that ever it could have been excited. Those eyes, thought he, which I have gazed at whole days with such unreflecting admiration; and whose shape, colour, size, and sweet proportion still hold their pre-eminence, now, while retaining their first lustre, have lost all their illusory charm! I meet them — but to deplore their vacancy of the soul’s intelligence — I fondly — vainly seek! [Thinking again of Eugenia later, he paraphrases Shakespeare saying he has] thrown away a gem richer than all her tribe!
Now that Bellamy has coerced Eugenia into marriage, he has access to the money that she’ll one day inherit. His plan all along. He forces her into a carriage and travels to her uncle’s estate. One of the most intense and memorable scenes follows:
Suddenly then, bidding the postillion stop at the end of a lane, he told him he was going to look at a little farm, and, ordering him to wait, made her alight and walk down it till they were out of sight of the man and the carriage. Fiercely, then stopping short, ‘Will you give me,’ he cried, ‘your promise, upon oath, that you will ask your Uncle for the money?’ ‘Indeed, Mr. Bellamy, I cannot!’ she answered. ‘Enough!’ he cried, and took from his pocket a pistol. ‘Good Heaven,’ she said, ‘you will not murder me?’ — ‘I cannot live without the money myself,’ he answered, ‘and why should I let you?’ He then felt in his waistcoat pocket, whence he took two bullets, telling her, she should have the pleasure of seeing him load the pistol; and that when one bullet had dispatched her, the other should disappoint the executioner. Horrour now conquered her, and she solemnly promised to ask whatever he dictated. ‘I must hold the pistol to your ear,’ cried he, ‘while you take your oath. See! ’tis loaded — This is no child’s play.’ He then lifted it up; but, at the same moment, a distant voice exclaimed, ‘Hold, villain! or you are a dead man!’ Starting, and meaning to hide it within his waistcoat, his hand shook — the pistol went off — it shot him through the body, and he dropt down dead. Without sense or motion, she fell by his side;
The pair had been noticed by a postillion of her uncle’s. Eugenia’s saved! From Bellamy! From death!
**
But who was this Bellamy? Where did he come from? Eugenia’s father later finds out such matters; Bellamy had been neglected as a child but when his father became rich through owing a gambling house, he was given an education and then tried but failed to seek out work, first in business, then in the army, before settling on a similar idea to that of his family’s. In gambling and gaming, he soon lost everything, and the remainder of his family, his father having since died, left him to himself. So, he began to seek out a wealthy heiress who he could force to marry. (And who better, in the end, that our Eugenia, an heiress nobody wanted to marry?) He first turned to Wales where he befriended a newly married Miss Melmond, now Mrs Berlinton, whose ‘beauty and romantic turn […] of so disproportioned a marriage [she was married to a much older man], opened to his unprincipled mind a scheme yet more flagitious.’ Bellamy and Mrs Berlinton remained in touch, even when he had found an heiress — though it didn’t matter, the narrator says, ‘who or what she was,’ though we can only conclude that Eugenia being disabled made her more of a target in Bellamy’s mind — which was further important to him because the debts he had accrued earlier were coming back to haunt him. Mrs Berlinton had fallen into similar gambling debts too, which explains her correspondence with him. After his death and the threat to Eugenia, Mrs Berlinton ‘shut herself up from the world’ and tried all she could to be forgiven by Eugenia, so filled with shame and grief.
It’s also revealed that ‘Alphonso Bellamy’ wasn’t the man’s real name, that he was instead known as Nicholas Gwigg. About this, Margaret Doody has written, in her fantastic Frances Burney: The Life in the Works — which will be referenced a lot more throughout the rest of this blog post — that ‘Gwigg,’ while being another typical made-up name by Burney, is rife with sexual connotations. The surname conjures up ‘Gigg,’ being slang for ‘nose,’ ‘snout,’ and by extension phallic imagery, as does his chosen fake name ‘Bellamy’ and the weapon he brandishes to threaten Eugenia. ‘Gwigg’ also suggests ‘niggle,’ being an old term referring to sexual intercourse. This is interesting in itself — no doubt linking the physical violence of Bellamy with an aggressive kind of male sexuality, as both are so interconnected in the attempts by men to dominate and control women — but also relates to a wider point in Burney’s Camilla, whereby she’s subverting a masculine narrative of domination that usually results in a woman’s death or sacrifice with instead a man’s death. Doody concludes, referencing the threat on Eugenia’s life, ‘it was either his life or hers. The woman-hater, the woman-destroyer, is dead.’
A young widow through force and trauma — this being the ‘social abjection’ Farr refers to — she decides to write her memoirs, which will ‘amuse [her] solitude’ as she has accepted her fate as a young lady forced into widowhood and therefore the lonely, twilight days with which such a period is often associated. One of the opening paragraphs that she has so far written reads:
Ye, too, O lords of the creation, mighty men! impute not to native vanity the repining spirit with which I lament the loss of beauty; attribute not to the innate weakness of my sex, the concern I confess for my deformity; nor to feminine littleness of soul, a regret of which the true source is to be traced to your own bosoms, and springs from your own tastes: for the value you yourselves set upon external attractions, your own neglect has taught me to know; and the indifferency with which you consider all else, your own duplicity has instructed me to feel.
The ableism and misogyny she’s faced her whole life will have no power over her anymore. And in fact, she plans to include a portrait of herself in the opening pages, which, Farr argues, shows Eugenia using her body, in a proto-feminist action, to criticise the very same male gaze that constructed it as an object of hate and disgust. This paragraph from her memoir shows Eugenia’s realisation about disability: she’s not disabled by her own inherent being but by the society around her.
**
In the novel’s final pages, Burney provides the last small sketches to this ‘Picture of Youth’ and details the fates of the story’s many characters. For Eugenia, she continues to live her life of ‘voluntary seclusion’ for some time, though remains haunted by Bellamy and his actions, forced to live a life of ‘no hope for new happiness.’ For Melmond, he continues to feel shameful and disgusted by his earlier blindness regarding his adoration of Indiana at the neglect of Eugenia, and in time, seeks out her favour again. At last, a happy ending for my girl! ‘Eugenia once loved, was loved for ever.’
Though the last sentence to their section is interesting and worth considering. In reference to Eugenia and Melmond’s future life together:
Where her countenance was looked at, her complexion was forgotten; while her voice was heard, her figure was unobserved; where her virtues were known, they seemed but to be enhanced by her personal misfortunes.
Doesn’t this contradict Eugenia’s point in her memoir that her Otherness can’t ever go unnoticed? This is brought up by Jason Farr in the conclusion to his thesis. He writes that this single sentence ‘abandons [the novel’s] criticism of the male gaze and the ways that it alienates women with physical defects,’ and contends that Burney is saying that it’s up to disabled people ‘to overcome their tribulations through their development of virtue and intelligence,’ which are also ‘attributes which will supposedly help those with ordinary bodies to overlook unusual physical appearances.’ Honestly, part of me wants to find a way to disagree with this, to avoid this being a contradiction, but I don’t think I can. Perhaps, as he concludes, this interpretation of disability is very much of the eighteenth century, by attempting to praise the mind of the individual while trying to look past their physical body but then failing to actually do this and simply reinforcing a conservative perspective around physical disability: that it’s the individual’s responsibility to overcome it.
One aspect of the ending of Eugenia’s story that’s, I think, entirely triumphant, however, is that Eugenia, well, finally gets to marry Melmond, the man she’s loved all along. I’m not hugely taken by any of the male love interests for the titular characters in Burney’s novels — though that’s arguably the point, particularly in her last novel — but I’ve always found Melmond a compelling character, and you can argue whether he’s truly deserving of Eugenia (or if indeed anybody is, my angel! — Okay, maybe that was too far), but I think, in the end, Eugenia’s desire for him being satisfied is a huge moment in the novel, and more generally amongst eighteenth-century texts.
‘A girl like a boy’: Gender and Education
Margaret Doody writes that, unlike her two sisters, Eugenia ‘is not given the name of a classical character, though she is given a classical name.’ (Lavinia is named after the Greco-Roman mythological figure, the daughter of Latinus, presumably because her character is sadly as passive and as largely ignored in the narrative as her classical namesake. Camilla is named after another character in Virgil’s Aeneid.) Her name is Greek in origin but over time, entered Latin, which alone reflects her classical education.
As seen throughout her story, Eugenia’s classical education is integral to how people view her, to how she responds to the horrors she’s faced, and how it relates to her Otherness. After all, as mentioned in the first section on her backstory, it was Sir Hugh’s idea to confer her a classical education by his once-tutor Dr Orkborne to prepare her for marriage with her cousin Clermont (which she’s very much aware of from the plan’s start), so he could be provided for while she became her uncle’s heir following his guilt after what had happened. Indeed, Eugenia’s lifelong exclusion, starting from childhood owing to her poor health, undoubtedly contributes to her willingness and ease to pursue the comparably solitary pursuit of becoming a classics scholar. This can be read as Eugenia taking control of her life — because it can’t be stressed enough how much she enjoys these academic pursuits, and much impresses her teacher Dr Orkborne — rather than being seen as worthless and helpless, as others see her throughout the novel.
Her willing pursuit of this kind of education — a decidedly ‘masculine’ education, highly uncommon for women at the time — puts her further at odds with the society around her: not only is she physically disabled but she’s hardly a respectable young lady at all. This is the idea of a ‘double deformity’ proposed by Doody. To some, she’s not only not a respectable, traditional young lady but not even a lady at all, she’s stripped of her identity, considered more like a ‘boy’ to the likes of her cousin Clermont (‘and what have I to do with marrying a girl like a boy?’). Indeed, the treatment of Eugenia as ‘like a boy’ is by design. As has been considered by Jennifer Locke, Eugenia is intended to be raised ‘as if she was a boy’: she is young enough and unfeminine enough, owing to her disability, that her intellectual development can start from scratch (‘may be done from the beginning’).
Incidentally, the character first proposed to be taught by Dr Orkborne once Sir Hugh no longer has need of him for himself is Indiana, the archetype of a shallow, callous, young lady — the unfortunate product of the patriarchal society in which she must survive. She’s fervently opposed to this idea, however. Claims are made that it would be harmful to her, that she’s in ‘danger of injuring her beauty by study.’ At first, this idea of beauty seems to be that of her mind, that it’s unladylike to pursue such an education, but it also extends to physical beauty. In Camilla, it’s clear that in the society in which Eugenia must also survive, a girl pursuing academic interests is made physically ugly and repulsive by doing so. Discussed more in the section below, this conception of beauty emerges from the deliberate exclusion of those physically disabled (or deformed) by the society that creates, reifies, and reproduces such a notion. It’s surely clear, too, that Clermont’s perception of Eugenia’s gender is influenced not just by her education but by her body: her physical appearance renders her undesirable — the worst flaw, according to men, that women can be; Eugenia is seen neither as a woman in mind nor in body.
Though being considered ‘doubly deformed’ by the society around her, we of course know this not to be true. Felicity Nussbaum has referred to Eugenia as a ‘cultural third term’: being ‘the opposite of the masculine figure’ (though she’s considered such through her education, she’s never treated as truly male) while also ‘the antithesis of the normal woman.’ Reinforcing the connection between Eugenia’s gender and disability, she writes, ‘As a triangulated gender anomaly, her character transforms disability to empower her to escape the usual trivial feminalities.’
**
Going back to what Jason Farr has written about Eugenia’s inability to see her world in any other way besides in ‘sweeping, epic terms,’ owing to her engrossment in her classical education (hence her brother referring to her as ‘little Greek and Latin’), the blame for any of this, really, falls on her teacher Dr Orkborne. This is because his tuition is at the expense of learning about the social world. He is ‘incapable of teaching her any social graces,’ writes Stephanie Diehl in her paper discussing women and classical education in the novels of Frances Burney. This is simply because Dr Orkborne is himself unaware of and incapable of learning about the social world, and so is reproducing this in his young student. (Throughout the novel, Dr Orkborne’s so chronically invested in his studies that he verbally abuses people who impact him and his work.) Here, argues Diehl, is Burney showing that education based only on the (masculine) classics is clearly not enough, and is indeed harmful to the individual and the people around them. This is seen most clearly, then, in Eugenia being unaware of the true intentions of Bellamy throughout the novel, becoming a tragic survivor to the predatory violence of men as well as the well-rounded educational neglect of her upbringing. (The direct link between Dr Orkborne’s teaching and Eugenia’s eventual abduction by Bellamy is pointed out by Diehl where she shows that when Eugenia receives her first letter from Bellamy and writes one in response, Dr Orkborne is asked to look at it. He does but dismisses her letter as ultimately inconsequential: ‘I believe it will do very sufficiently; but I have only concerned myself with the progress of Miss Eugenia in the Greek and Latin languages; any body can teach her English.’)
In the same light as Farr considers Burney’s approach to physical disability — of attempting to look past an individual’s physical disability but ultimately failing to do so and reinforcing conservative beliefs — can the same be said of a person’s upbringing and social skills? Clearly, Burney recognises the harm and abuse suffered by those who perceive the world differently to those around them, like Eugenia certainly does. But again, I wonder if the point Burney is making is that this is a problem with society and how it’s been constructed, or if it’s merely up to the individual to change their circumstances.
‘I am no longer to be deceived nor trifled with’: Beauty and Deformity/Disability
So far throughout this blog post, I’ve explored the themes of ableism and disability in relation to Eugenia, but here I want to focus on some specific aspects of her story, namely of Eugenia’s realisation of her Otherness and of the relationship between beauty and disability.
As detailed in the opening section discussing her backstory, Eugenia is scarred by a near fatal outbreak of smallpox, has ceased growing after the incident on the seesaw when she was eight years old, and walks with a limp, with one leg being shorter that the other. An understanding of her ‘lameness’ (though Essaka Joshua has written that this and similar terms used to describe Eugenia in the novel are not intended to be malicious) and how it relates to the society around her is hidden from her by her family, such that during any instance where a passer-by cruelly remarks upon her physical appearance, Eugenia’s unaware that such malice is directed at her and instead dismisses it.
However, things change for her around a third of the way into the novel. (To contextualise these scenes, they occur after the point where Eugenia and Bellamy first meet and dance together but before he’s widely believed to have nefarious intentions.) She finds herself climbing to the top of an unfinished summerhouse with her sister Camilla, forced up by Lionel. He then removes the ladders, trapping the girls in an exposed location for all the many people walking down below to see. One boy calls up, ‘What were you put up there for, Miss? to frighten the crows?’ She doesn’t understand what he means. The boy and his companion on the ground continue to insult her. Eugenia, ‘to whom such language was utterly new,’ begins to understand their ridicule, and is agonised and humiliated into silence. Their mockery relentlessly continues.
She realises her Otherness.
She’s distraught, ‘moped with melancholy,’ and wishes to isolate herself from the world around her. In a scene that’s as memorable as is common, Camilla tries to reach out to her, to be there for her, to understand what’s happened:
Camilla ventured to say, ‘Is it possible, my dearest Eugenia, the passing insolence of two or three brutal wretches can affect you thus deeply?’ She awakened from her silent trance, and raising her head, while something bordering upon resentment began to kindle in her breast, cried, ‘Spare me this question, Camilla, and I will spare you all reproach.’
‘What reproach, my dear sister,’ cried Camilla, amazed, ‘what reproach have I merited?’
‘The reproach,’ answered she, solemnly; ‘that, from me, all my family merit! the reproach of representing to me, that thousands resembled me! of assuring me I had nothing peculiar to myself, though I was so unlike all my family — of deluding me into utter ignorance of my unhappy defects, and then casting me, all unconscious and unprepared, into the wide world to hear them!’ […] ‘I am no longer to be deceived nor trifled with. I will no more expose to the light a form and face so hideous: — I will retire from all mankind, and end my destined course in a solitude that no one shall discover.’
Oh, Eugenia…
**
In a pair of chapters entitled ‘Strictures on Deformity’ and ‘Strictures on Beauty,’ in an effort to console his daughter and teach her about beauty and deformity, Mr Tyrold arranges a questionable lesson for Eugenia, to which she finally acquiesces — before first noticing her reflection in the mirror as she’s about the leave with him, burying her face in her hands. He takes Eugenia and Camilla into the surrounding country (where she’s again ridiculed by those around her: ‘O come! come! look! — here’s the little hump-back gentlewoman!’). They arrive at a small house with an iron fence. In the window, there’s a young lady, described as being the most beautiful of women, with a ‘perfect face’ and ‘beautiful figure.’ She then walks out into the garden of the house, sits on the ground, and begins pulling out handfuls of grass and scattering it all over her ‘fine flowing hair.’ She then bursts violently into fits of crying and laughter. The girl then approaches them, wishing them good day and asks for a shilling, ‘while the slaver drivelled unrestrained from her mouth, rendering utterly disgusting a chin that a statuary might have wished to model.’ She is mad, beautiful but mad, as their father’s lesson dictates.
Mr Tyrold’s lesson is clear, states Margaret Doody: Eugenia should be grateful for her mind, even if she’s not beautiful, as it’s worse to be beautiful with no mind, or ‘born an idiot,’ as he puts it. Of course his lesson is flawed, not just because it perpetuates the same kind of staring and judging that’s harmed his younger daughter so much, but because we know it to be wrong anyway: there’s no dichotomy between ‘beauty’ and ‘madness.’ (Related, I’d really recommend this video essay by the Leftist Cooks about mental illness where they discuss mad pride.)
Doody makes some really interesting points about this so-called ‘idiot’ girl. She writes that she only exists as part of Mr Tyrold’s lesson, to be observed and for assumptions to made about her — as they are of Eugenia — and any actual truth about her is left unclear and unresolved in the narrative (‘the meaning of her tears and laughter can never be known,’ she writes). Her existence is solely one of spectacle, no explanations are ever given as to why she behaves the way she does. For example, Doody considers the instance where the girl, after becoming aware of her onlookers, grabs a cat that’s nearby in the garden perhaps to present to the Tyrolds, to share this part of her life with them, but then possibly out of shame, covers her face and beats herself. She can very easily be read as autistic, Doody concludes, with her actions being rich in communication, just not the verbal kind that’s considered the norm. And so, just like other characters do with Eugenia, this ‘idiot’ girl is treated as lesser, diagnosed as a problem.
In the end, this lesson is an ‘education by torture’ for Eugenia, who, terrified, wishes for it to be over, pleading that she’s learnt her lesson: ‘I feel your awful lesson! but impress it no further, lest I die in receiving it!’ Mr Tyrold thinks, as a male observer, he has fully understood the ‘feminine,’ by using, cites Doody, the archetypical feminine representation of a ‘return to nature,’ of primitive womanhood, to show his daughters what beauty is. But he’s wrong: he fails to truly understand the girl in the garden on any meaningful level and ends up frightening his daughters into submission by a lesson that simply reproduces the harm he’s seeking to minimise.
In her recent book Physical Disability in British Romantic Literature, Disability Studies scholar Essaka Joshua writes that in Burney’s novel ‘beauty and deformity are not absolutes,’ and that it’s the constructed notion of beauty that ‘creates the problem of the deformed body.’ (This focus on beauty by Joshua is rooted in her aim to — though Eugenia has been ‘reclaimed as a disabled woman’ — re-centre the focus on her character around deformity and aesthetic, rather than disability and functionality, as academics like Jason Farr have done, because the novel’s focus on Eugenia is centred on aesthetics, not ability. This shift in focus, as well as because the notion of ‘disability’ is anachronistic to this historical period, is being increasingly considered because it will provide a better understanding of such historical novels like Camilla as well as further developing the study of disability as an academic interest.)
Considering this notion of beauty — physical, aesthetic beauty — Eugenia’s own words in her memoir at the end of the novel reveal that she ultimately rejects her father’s problematic lesson of valuing her mind over her body (in a way, to reject, to ignore her body). Indeed, she’s more aware of her body at the end of the novel than she is at the beginning.
As well as challenging the traditional notion of beauty (which, as discussed above, has stripped her of her own gender identity in the eyes of the patriarchal society in which she lives) by recognising the deliberate exclusion of those physically disabled — or deformed — that such a notion is built on, she, I believe, considers her own beauty. Despite the contradictions that emerge at the end of the novel regarding disability, I think Eugenia, in the end, does discover her beauty. In her memoir, she writes:
for the value you yourselves set upon external attractions, your own neglect has taught me to know; and the indifferency with which you consider all else, your own duplicity has instructed me to feel.
By way of challenging the male gaze that has oppressed her throughout her life, she finds her beauty.
My girl.
References
Burney, F. (1999 [1796]) Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth. Edited by: Bloom, E.A. and Bloom, L.D. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A link to the free eBook via Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40619/40619-h/40619-h.htm)
Diehl, S. (2017) ‘Injuring Her Beauty by Study’: Women and Classical Learning in Frances Burney’s Novels,’ BSU Honors Program Theses and Projects. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/honors_proj/199 (Accessed: 31 October 2022).
Doody, M.A. (1988) Frances Burney: The Life in the Works. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Farr, J.S. (2013) ‘Queer Deformities: Disability and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century Women’s Fiction — Haywood, Scott, Burney,’ PhD Thesis, UC San Diego. Available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7sq8k58m (Accessed: 31 October 2022).
Garden, R. (2010) ‘Illness and Inoculation: Narrative Strategies in Frances Burney’s Camilla,’ in Laflen, A. and Block, M. (eds.) Prescribing Gender in Medicine and Narrative. New Castle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.64–94. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/1145111/Illness_and_Inoculation_Narrative_Strategies_in_Frances_Burney_s_Camilla_1796_ (Accessed: 4 November 2022).
Joshua, E. (2020) Physical Disability in British Romantic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/physical-disability-in-british-romantic-literature/relational-deformity-in-frances-burneys-camilla/21F37F129BCEAC2170FB6D22791AB2DE (Accessed: 4 November 2022).
Locke, J. (2009) ‘Reading Female Bodies: Deformity, Gender and Fortunetelling in Frances Burney’s Camilla,’ UCLA: Center for the Study of Women. Available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/83r2t6tt (Accessed: 4 November 2022).
Nussbaum, F. (2003) The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
