Chapter 2 - Frances Burney at the Seaside

Summary

2. George III was renowned for visiting south coast towns such as Weymouth rather than travelling further afield for his amusements, and the increasing popularity of seaside holidays among Britons in the second half of the eighteenth century no doubt generated a sharper apprehension of what it meant to inhabit a relatively small island separated from the continent, if not an identification with the idea of ‘island race’ exceptionalism. Guest’s essay ‘Frances Burney at the Seaside’ discusses the representation of Brighton, Southampton, and other seaside towns in Burney’s Camilla (1796) and The Wanderer: or, Female Difficulties (1814), and it looks at how they explore the ambiguity around social differentiation that is a feature of depictions of coastal resorts, where the beach was a place of work as well as a public space open to all. It argues that Burney’s novels address social change through the language of gender difference, and that in doing so they invite us to think about both the potential freedoms available to women in socially mixed spaces and the jeopardy faced by figures such as Camilla, as she herself becomes an object of the tourist gaze.