A review by hlmhlm
Evelina by Frances Burney

3.0

Listened to this as an audiobook and it was a great listen — very long but that suited me. It was a classic plot: naïve but bright country girl is manipulated and taken advantage of in city but then wins all in the end. It’s completely told through letters. It was written in the late 1700s and it’s always fascinating to hear what made a great night out for revellers in those days. It was hard to stomach some of the sexist bullying and manipulation that Evelina experienced, and which was presented as just routine treatment. Also hard to stomach the abuse of the French grandmother and her companion mainly on the grounds of them being “foreign”. No doubt our sensibilities reading this in the 21st century are very different, so these portrayals tell us a lot about the society of that time