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Get every literary device explanation for Evelina: or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World
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Personification
Explanation and Analysis—Mr. Villars's Joy:
After Evelina writes to Mr. Villars and tells him of her reunion with her estranged birth father Sir John Belmont—describing how he has welcomed her into his life and given her her rightful title and inheritance—Mr. Villars responds joyfully, using a metaphor and personification in the process:
My child, thy happiness is engraved, in golden characters, upon the tablets of my heart! and their impression is indelible; for, should the rude and deep-searching hand of Misfortune attempt to pluck them from their repository, the fleeting fabric of life would give way, and in tearing from my vitals the nourishment by which they are supported, she would but grasp at a shadow insensible to her touch.
Here, Mr. Villars uses a metaphor to compare his heart to tablets on which Evelina’s “happiness is engraved, in golden characters,” effectively communicating the intensity of his happiness for his adopted daughter. He then personifies “Misfortune” as a woman, imagining that, should she use her hand “to attempt to pluck [the golden characters engraved on his heart] from their repository,” she would remove his very life-force and he would become “a shadow.”
This is Mr. Villars’s poetic way of sharing with Evelina that her happiness makes him immensely happy as well, so much so that it is impossible to separate her joy from his. Seeing her reputation restored and her nobility acknowledged is all he has wanted for her since the start of the novel.
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