Representation Of Early Urbanization In Evelina

The middle and late eighteenth century to the middle nineteenth century is the period ofearly urbanization in Britain. British early urbanization mainly includes populationurbanization, changes in the distribution of urban space, economic urbanization and lifestyleurbanization and so on. Fanny Burney (1752-1840) is a famous female novelist in Britain inthe eighteenth century. Her masterpiece Evelina (1778), mainly takes the heroine Evelina’sthree London trips as the main clue to analyze how she has gradually become mature from ana ve girl and how she has eventually entered into the complicated city life. Since thepublication of Evelina, many scholars at home and abroad have studied it respectively fromsuch perspectives as feminism, themes and narrative forms of the novel and so on. But so far,very few people have made profound analysis of and researches on it from the perspective ofurbanization.Urbanization has three characteristics: demographic characteristics, landscape features,and cultural values. Therefore, this thesis aims to combine the characteristics of British earlyurbanization to analyze the physical urbanization, lifestyle urbanization and ideologicalurbanization represented in the novel Evelina. The first chapter will mainly discuss thephysical urbanization in the novel. In the text, the author describes Evelina’s threeexperiences of London life under the guidance of Mrs. Mirvan, Madame Duval and Mrs.Selwyn, and thus this chapter will mainly focus on the population urbanization reflected bythe rural-urban migration of population and the use of transportation modes of both rural andurban people and different urban strata by Evelina’s three experiences of London life. Thesecond chapter intends to analyze the British early lifestyle urbanization implied in the novelby the analysis of the changes both from the original squire lifestyle to the leisure lifestyle forboth the aristocrats and middle class reflected by the leisure lifestyle and the employmentmechanism involved in their social activities represented by the participation in balls,enjoyment of operas, coffee drinking, visitation to Cox’s Museum of Evelina and other maincharacters in the novel. The third chapter mostly analyzes the ideological urbanizationrepresented in the novel embodied by changes in interpersonal relationship and social valuesduring Evelina’s experiences of London life with her participation in a series of social activities.Social changes brought by the eighteenth century industrial revolution promote theappearance and development of the British early urbanization, and the early urbanizationrepresented in Evelina is like a mirror that reflects the characteristics of British earlyurbanization, which completely manifests people’s life situations under the social backgroundat that time. It not only reveals people’s life changes and improvement brought by the earlyurbanization, but also reflects the continuous growing process of British early urbanization.