Wednesday, November 9, 2011

For Credit: Happily Ever After? (Roby Mitchell)

Roby asks:

When Evelina reads the falsifed letter from Lord Orville she starts to believe that he has a duality in his personality that which makes her believe that his politeness is simply an act, obviously since he did not write the letter we assume that this is to be dismissed, but it begs the question wheter or not Lord Orville is to perfect and now that Evelina has agreed to take his hand do you think that that he would either show another side that Evelina would not expect to find or if he is perfect would his over "politeness" eventually get old? OF course this is hypothetical since the book does not include an Ever After.

12 comments:

  1. As much as Lord Orville is portrayed as a "perfect" or "ideal" man, I would argue that Evelina is presented in the same light. According to those around her, she is the perfect embodiment of feminine beauty and virtue. Therefore, I would imagine that if Burney were to have written a fourth volume about Evelina's marriage to Orville, we would have seen our heroine living a life of marital bliss. Her husband would continue to treat her with kindness, love, and respect, and she would act as a wonderful host to all of his esteemed guests. Together they would attend all of the classiest parties and take in the most charming shows London has to offer. Considering that marriage demands a level of intimacy prohibited for unmarried couples, this fourth volume would only be believable if Evelina were to be exposed to a formerly unknown side of Orville, however, I don't think it would be distasteful. Rather, I imagine that she would be privy to his more masculine tendencies and passions.
    While I don't think there would be much conflict in this marriage between two ideal individuals, I do think they would disagree about how to best raise their children. Having grown up under the tutelage of a loving reverend, apart from the city and its temptations, Evelina may desire her children to follow a similar path. Alternatively, she may desire her children to be exposed to everything she was denied by educating them thoroughly. I think that Orville would support either of these options as long as the child was male. However, if he had a daughter, I think he would be more cautious to educate her because he seems to truly value the traditional gender roles. I think it would have been really interesting to see Burney work through this scenario.

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  2. I do not think that Lord Orville's "perfection" would get old. I think that Evelina, being the "beautiful" woman that she is, deals with men in their most obtrusive form; men treat her as an object of beauty and nothing more. She gets to know Lord Orville on a much deeper level and their respect for each other is convincing enough. I think that his "imperfection" that she saw with the letter that was supposedly written by Lord Orville is indicative of her worries of her own imperfections. I do not think she is as bothered by his lack of manners with the letter as she is with the fact that the letter means his disapproval of her.
    I do not think that their marriage will be much different from their relationship prior to their union because Orville seems to be a genuine person who cares for Evelina. The passion of the scene where he shows his love for her, aka "the money shot", is very convincing and genuine.

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  3. I think that we have no reason to think that Lord Orville is anything but true in his manners and intentions. It is true that he could just know how seduce women with his words, but that does not explain the little mannerisms that we are able to pick up as we read. This includes when Lord Orville does not seem happy about the other men betting, or when looks disgusted with the old woman foot race. I think that Burney simply tried to create the perfect man for Evelina to get at the end of the novel.

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  4. I agree with Dayna and Nathan, Lord Orville is presented to us as nothing but polite and kind. As we talked about in class, not having someone to ask for a woman's hand in marriage would have been a deal breaker for most men. However, it doesn't Lord Orville bother Lord Orville since he truly wants to be with Evelina. I also don't think that his politeness could get old. Who would tell their husband or wife "stop treating me so politely"? I think Lord Orvile works well with Evelina.

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  5. "Stop treating me so politely" lol... Based on what Burney has given us, I'd have to agree that Evelina and Lord Orville seem to be the perfect couple. I have no reason to suspect that they their relationship will not be happy and wonderful in every way. He is attentive to her and seeks to hear her opinions. However, with our 21st Century critical view on relationships, we all know that there has to be something amiss. Evelina makes mistakes since she is young. She does things that puts her in great danger, however Lord Orville never makes a single mistake. He is PERFECT. My mother always tells me that there is no such thing as a perfect man. Therefore, if the Lord Orville and Evelina relationship were to be a real one, I'd say that Lord Orville isn't showing all of himself. Perhaps he isn't as tidy? Leaves the toilet bowl seat up? or maybe he is harboring a dark secret....??? Based on the book, I'd say their marriage will be perfect. All problems have been solved by the ending. However, I have to also state that based on real life, there is something fishy about Lord Orville!!!!!

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  6. I have to agree with Kristen. I have to question whether or not they can continue to be so perfect. I think that Burney wants us to think that their lives will continue being perfect, but that makes it so much more unbelievable to me. From the class fishbowl, we all tended to lean towards Evelina being the more psychologically real character, so wouldn't her marriage need difficulties to keep her more realistic? While I do think, like my classmates have said, Burney would have written their marriage to be completely perfect, I think for the sake of keeping Evelina more psychologically real something bad must happen.

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  7. Regardless of whether Orville is as perfect as he seems to be, we must remember that by and large our impression of him as perfect depends on how we know about him: from Evelina's letters to Rev. Villars. Much as Pamela's account of her time at Mr. B's cannot be taken in an entirely unbiased light, Evelina's presentation of Lord Orville as the embodiment of perfect male virtue and goodness is just that - her perceptions of him. Given the form of the text, we see him only through the lens of Evelina's experiences with him. Are her perceptions of him unbiased, complete or objective? No. Are those same perceptions necessarily inaccurate? Possible, but if there are any significant clues she misses as to his nature and disposition, I can't think of any.

    Their marriage might not completely live up to her naive expectations, but even if Orville isn't as innately polite as he appears to be, Evelina still has a match better suited to her own disposition than most of those available to her, so failing "happily ever after," she should at least get "happier than was likely." In the end, she could have done SO much worse, or even suffered the ignominy that her mother before her did, but instead she had as good of a prospect at happiness as could be expected.

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  8. I agree with also agree with Dayna and Nathan. At no point in the novel does Lord Orville act in a way that would suggest that he would have hidden layers to his personality. Burney did not hold back in making some of the other characters seem rude/obnoxious or in some other negative light; Lord Orville gets none of this portrayal. I also do not think that Lord Orville's politeness would get old for Evelina. I think that given that Evelina was raised by Rev. Villars, Evelina would expect her husband to treat her in a very polite and caring sort of way because she grew up being treated in that fashion by Villars.

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  9. I do not think that Lord Orville's character of being "too nice" should be falsely associated with having bad intentions. I think that it may sometimes be perceived that way only because of the way Evelina reacts to his politeness. I definitely think that she enjoys the attention in a way and sometimes expects him to treat her in this manner. The idea of him having two personalities I also think is normal. Many people react differently in various situations and thus, depending on the situation and interactions ones actions may come off as acting not like themselves giving outsiders this notion of having many personalities.

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  10. I agree that Lord Orville is a stand up guy, I mean he does exhibit all of the traits that most women traditionally find admirable. I think that Lord Orville's character is meant to show how chivalry is not even common in the 18c because out of all the male characters in Evelina only he seemed to be truly chivalrous. Maybe that applies to the 21c as well.

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  11. There are limits to how much you can speculate about what happens once a novel is over. Everything there is to know about the characters went into the novel itself--where the novelist falls silent, the story ends. Think again, though, about the list of "rules" Squire B. writes for Pamela, which she comments on extensively in relaying them to her parents. Those rules lay out, in fairly explicit detail, points where Squire B. anticipates conflict and his suggestions on how they ought to navigate it. He also specifies that he will need to warrant the standard of kindness and forbearance that he sets for Pamela. In other words, Squire B. knows they will disagree, annoy one another, and argue, as all couples do--he just wants to make sure that they do it in a spirit of mutual underlying respect (not, of course, mutual *power*--I don't want to overstate the case here!).

    Richardson writes into his story this understanding of how their relationship will change and develop over time. Burney offers nothing of the kind. We talked a lot in class about how the differences between a male author and a female author are apparent in the way they depict the inside of a teenage girl's mind. Perhaps there are differences too in how the future of a marriage gets depicted that reflect the experience of an author who has never (at the point of writing) been in a serious committed relationship and the author who is married.

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  12. I'm always cautious of characters who seem to be too perfect, just as I am for real people. Like Krupa said, it shouldn't be associated with bad intentions, but people who are too perfect worry me. Each of the novels we have read have focused on morality and appearances, and I think this one is no different. People always tend to present themselves in the best possible ways in public, and have a fatal character flaw that make their true personality come out. While this may not make them awful people, this usually shows a lack of morality in some sense. The purpose of an 18th century novel, in my opinion, is to entertain readers with a story that shows others who have character flaws that may be similar to theirs. Just as people keep their flaws secret from others, I believe most characters in 18th century fiction - Lord Orville included - do the same.

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