In one of the many tense conversations between Madame Duval and Captain Mirvan, Madame Duval tells the Captain that he might get a lot out of living abroad in France. As an English naval officer who has been fighting against France for most of his career (and holds prejudiced attitudes toward France as a result), Captain Mirvan does not agree and responds passive-aggressively, using a simile in the process:
“How will you make out that, hay, Madam? come, please to tell me, where wou’d be the good of that?”
“Where! why a great deal. They’d make quite another person of you.”
“What, I suppose you’d have me learn to cut capers?—and dress like a monkey?—and palaver in French gibberish?—hay, would you?—And powder, and daub, and make myself up, like some other folks?”
This passage reveals some of Captain Mirvan’s biases toward French people. He makes it clear that he believes that, in order to assimilate with the French people, he would have to “cut capers,” talk “in French gibberish,” “powder, daub, and make himself up"—and, using a simile—“dress like a monkey.” This offensive simile emerges from the fact that, in 18th-century England, the French were often caricatured as monkeys in political cartoons. This was part of nationalist efforts to present the British as superior to the supposedly less-evolved French.
That Captain Mirvan also imagines himself in France and putting on make-up is also tied to prejudiced ideas held by some Englanders at the time that the French were more feminine and weaker. This is related to sexist views prevalent in this time period as a whole, establishing men as strong and superior and women as weak and submissive.
In an example of dramatic irony, Evelina (and readers) know that Captain Mirvan and Sir Clement are pretending to be robbers when they attack Madame Duval and haul her out of her carriage, but Madame Duval does not. The irony comes across clearly when Madame Duval tells Evelina after-the-fact about the murderous intentions of the robbers, which she (and readers) knows is not true:
“Why, child, all this misfortune comes of that puppy’s making us leave our money behind us; for as soon as the robber see I did not put nothing in his hands, he lugged me out of the chariot by main force, and I verily thought he’d have murdered me. He was as strong as a lion; I was no more in his hands than a child. But I believe never nobody was so abused before, for he dragged me down the road, pulling and hawling me all the way, as if I’d no more feeling than a horse.”
Though Madame Duval’s experience is genuinely violent and traumatic—and Evelina does not approve of the men’s actions—the scene offers something of a comedic moment in the novel. There is also an element of situational irony in this moment, since Madame Duval herself has acted in manipulative ways but is now finally on the receiving end of such behavior.
There is also some notable figurative language in Madame Duval’s description—she uses a simile in stating that the robber was “as strong as a lion,” and she metaphorically compares herself to both a child (due to her weakness in the face of his strength) and a horse (due to how carelessly the “robber” hauled her down the road). Her descriptions communicate her fear and also her tendency to exaggerate (as Evelina knows it’s unlikely that Captain Mirvan treated her in such an extreme way).
The first time that Sir John Belmont—Evelina’s birth father—appears in the novel, he is responding to Lady Howard’s letter about Evelina being his real daughter. In his letter to Lady Howard, he directly denies being Evelina’s father while trying to protect his reputation, using a pair of similes in the process:
It seldom happens that a man, though extolled as a saint, is really without blemish; or that another, though reviled as a devil, is really without humanity. Perhaps the time is not very distant, when I may have the honour to convince your Ladyship of this truth, in regard to Mr. Villars and myself.
Though the formality and politeness of Sir John’s language somewhat masks his message, what he is saying is that Mr. Villars may not be as trustworthy a source of information as Lady Howard believes him to be. In other words, Mr. Villars may be lying about Evelina’s true parentage in order to afford his daughter some financial and social advantage. While Mr. Villars is making Sir John out to be behaving immorally, it may be Mr. Villers himself who is behaving as such. Sir John communicates this via his similes, writing that Mr. Villars “though extolled as a saint” certainly has “blemishes” and that, though Sir John himself may appear “as a devil,” he is not “without humanity.”
Through all of this language, Sir John is subtly encouraging Lady Howard to understand that he is not intentionally abandoning his daughter, he just genuinely does not believe that Evelina could be his (as he has raised Miss Belmont in her place). Sir John’s assessment of himself as not being “without humanity” proves to be true when he embraces Evelina and offers her her noble title and inheritance upon meeting her and realizing that she really is his biological child.
