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Matthew's Reviews > Cecilia
Cecilia
by
by
Ah ha! Thanks Burney, Cheers Burney, Ta-da Burney! You and your Cecilia, the MOST BEAUTIFUL of all Heroines because Burney SCRAPPED the idea to make her Ugly because why else is MANSFIELD PARK (actually the best Austen) overlooked so much (the answer is probably something to do because you can't really get your knickers in a twist over it)? Well Cecilia is getting her knickers in a twist over her FORTUNE. Welcome to the land of Burney, where everything it 'proto-', 18th Century Lit is all over the place, lots of time spent focusing on the Psychological novel because the History and Romance Fictions are SO over by 1781, all hail JACOBIN REALISM, ha!
Cecilia is an unreliable narrator because she is told how to think etc by society Burney exploits this for dramatic effect and Cecilia is always in a lose-lose scenario (because that's just how life is, for women, not men). Burney ruins her heroine over the course of 941 pages, pushes her to insanity and doesn't really fully bring her back from the brink in the last 20 pages, nice speech by Dr. Lyster who basically sums up the plot in about a paragraph, name one more novel more fitting of the title PRIDE and PREJUDICE other than this one?! Impossible!
Shocking gunplay from bored contemptuous men, Cecilia bores with the cast of the novel as quickly as we do, a true reflection, a true character, so real and relatable, well THANK YOU Burney, for such an eventual conservative and guarded old lady, 30 year old Frances was a right charmer oooooh.
So this novel really tears apart the themes of society that the Post-Modernists were OBSESSED OMG about, the entire novel is just a heavy ironic sigh, like pull yourself together because Cecilia is DONE.
Cecilia is naive, of course, but she charges into socialisation head-on, good for her, meets a world that moves at her like a killer tornado though, maybe figuratively loses a limb or two (because oh my the finances in this book are ridiculous and complicated but she basically gets conned out of her inheritance, the set-up for the novel being she has to marry a man willing to take her surname, lol good luck combating male pride, and then she gets it all, but once she is initially conned out of her money she's then framed as a criminal for idk what to be honest but she basically freaks out as you would, sigh), so you've got your slimy London a la Dickens, but Burney definitely looks forward to her last novel The Wanderer with lots of melancholic Romantic imprisonment, bless.
Cecilia is an unreliable narrator because she is told how to think etc by society Burney exploits this for dramatic effect and Cecilia is always in a lose-lose scenario (because that's just how life is, for women, not men). Burney ruins her heroine over the course of 941 pages, pushes her to insanity and doesn't really fully bring her back from the brink in the last 20 pages, nice speech by Dr. Lyster who basically sums up the plot in about a paragraph, name one more novel more fitting of the title PRIDE and PREJUDICE other than this one?! Impossible!
Shocking gunplay from bored contemptuous men, Cecilia bores with the cast of the novel as quickly as we do, a true reflection, a true character, so real and relatable, well THANK YOU Burney, for such an eventual conservative and guarded old lady, 30 year old Frances was a right charmer oooooh.
So this novel really tears apart the themes of society that the Post-Modernists were OBSESSED OMG about, the entire novel is just a heavy ironic sigh, like pull yourself together because Cecilia is DONE.
Cecilia is naive, of course, but she charges into socialisation head-on, good for her, meets a world that moves at her like a killer tornado though, maybe figuratively loses a limb or two (because oh my the finances in this book are ridiculous and complicated but she basically gets conned out of her inheritance, the set-up for the novel being she has to marry a man willing to take her surname, lol good luck combating male pride, and then she gets it all, but once she is initially conned out of her money she's then framed as a criminal for idk what to be honest but she basically freaks out as you would, sigh), so you've got your slimy London a la Dickens, but Burney definitely looks forward to her last novel The Wanderer with lots of melancholic Romantic imprisonment, bless.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
November 13, 2020
– Shelved
November 13, 2020
–
Finished Reading
January 2, 2021
– Shelved as:
favourite
