Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Evelina: or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sensibility, Etiquette, and Appearances
Gender, Reputation, and Marriage
Inheritance, Class, and Nobility
Innocence, Guidance, and Experience
Summary
Analysis
A few days later, Evelina walks into Bristol with Mrs. Selwyn and Lord Orville and bumps into Mr. Macartney. He is not angry with Evelina for missing their meeting but wishes to repay her the money she lent him. While they are talking, Miss Belmont enters the room, and Macartney grows pale and distracted. Evelina notices that Lord Orville is watching her, and Macartney and hurries away. She wonders if Miss Belmont was once Macartney’s lover.
In 18th-century Britain, nobility was often associated with virtue, while poverty was associated with corruption and immorality. But Macartney, who is poor, proves that reliable and honest people exist in all classes.
Themes
Lord Orville asks Evelina what she wants with Macartney, and Evelina says that she is desperate to talk with him but cannot say why. Lord Orville seems hurt and says that he has a right to know, since he has sworn to protect Evelina. Evelina again protests that she cannot share Macartney’s secrets, and Lord Orville says that he will help arrange a meeting for her to speak with Macartney.
Evelina feels torn between doing what she feels is right (keeping Macartney’s secret) and complying with 18th-century etiquette, which states that an unmarried woman should not meet privately with a strange. man. Rather than judge Evelina for her decision—and assume that Macartney is her lover—Lord Orville gives Evelina the benefit of the doubt and supports her right to make decisions for herself.
Themes
That evening, Lord Orville tells Evelina that Mr. Macartney will visit her the next day. When Macartney arrives, he gives Evelina back the money she lent him, and Evelina asks him how he knows Miss Belmont. Macartney replies that she was his lover in Paris, and Evelina realizes that Macartney is her brother, since he is also Sir John Belmont’s son. She does not say anything, however, and only reveals this to Mrs. Selwyn after Macartney has left.
Although nobility was associated with virtue in this period, while poverty was associated with immorality and corruption, Macartney’s honest and honorable behavior proves that moral people exist in all classes. Furthermore, class is depicted as arbitrary here as Macartney is, in fact, a noble—his father, Sir John, is a nobleman. However, Macartney is oblivious to his noble status and behaves morally for the sake of being moral, not because of the class he was raised in.
Themes
Evelina receives Mr. Villars’s letter in which he asks her to leave Bristol and get away from Lord Orville, whom he suspects she is in love with. Evelina now realizes that she has been blind— she does love Lord Orville, and if she does not get away from him, her happiness may be ruined forever. Even though she knows it will be hard, she vows to leave Bristol as soon as possible and never see Lord Orville again. She hopes that Mr. Villars will not judge her for her innocence and naïveté.
Although Evelina loves Lord Orville, she does not think she will be able to marry him as, although she is a noble on her father’s side, her father denies his connection to her. As a result, she’s been raised middle-class. Eighteenth-century Britain was strictly ordered according to class and Lord Orville, who is a nobleman, is unlikely to marry someone he believes is beneath his own social rank.
Themes
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