Today, a tale of two women in an age of
technological revolution. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
Fanny Burney was an English
author and diarist born in 1752 -- 7 years before
another famous author, Mary Wollstonecraft. Burney
was literary upper-crust. Her father was a great
musical scholar, and Fanny knew at an early age
that she would also write.
Mary Wollstonecraft came from further down the
social ladder. She worked as a governess and first
wrote for children. She was a radical who ran with
the anti-establishment -- with the American
revolutionary and inventor Thomas Paine, the
radical scientist Joseph Priestley, the
industrialist Josiah Wedgwood.
In 1778, Burney's first novel,
Evelina, rocketed her to fame while
Wollstonecraft struggled to make ends meet.
Evelina was about a young girl
entering society, and it was a runaway success.
Ten years later Wollstonecraft wrote her feminist
call to arms, Vindication of the Rights of
Women, and set the agenda for social change
ever since. Five years later she died in
Meanwhile the star of the conservative Burney rose.
Her books, for and about young ladies, had a
focused moral edge. She wrote more freely in her
diary and correspondence. She didn't marry 'til she
was 39, and gave birth to a daughter three years
She survived childbirth but underwent a mastectomy
in 1811. I had trouble reading her description of
that terrible operation -- done before the
invention of anesthesia. You can taste her terror.
You can hear the sound of the knife, having reached
every nerve ending, finally scraping bone to remove
the last of the cancer. But she survived and lived
another 29 years.
Neither woman trusted sentiment or had time for
people who could weep at a beggar's plight yet do
nothing about it. Both ran on ethical imperatives.
Wollstonecraft's Christianity was a radical force.
On the other hand, we're shocked to learn that
Burney's old-world ethics meant keeping her surgery
secret while her husband was away on business -- so
she wouldn't distract him.
Burney wrote more, but Wollstonecraft was far more
influential. In a world where everyone knew
everyone, they seem to have been almost unaware of
each other. Only late in her life does Burney take
one swipe at Wollstonecraft. She speaks of
... manners which uphold not alone the Rights of
man, and the Rights of Woman, but the Rights of
Children -- and will, ere long, ... include the
Rights of Cats, Dogs, and Mice.
What's missing in Burney's writings is any
celebration of creative invention. Wollstonecraft's
enemy was orthodoxy. She trafficked with inventors
and risk-takers. The two had courage, honor, and
talent in common. It took courage to write when
women writers were unwelcome. But Burney lacked
Wollstonecraft's daring in what she wrote. And, in
the end, that made the difference.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
Devlin, D.D., The Novels and Journals of Fanny
Burney. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987.
(Chapter 3, Radical and Conservative, treats the
relative roles of Burney and Wollstonecraft.)
Burney, F., The Famous Miss Burney: The
Diaries and Letters of Fanny Burney (B.G.
Schrank and D.J. Supino, eds.). New York: The John
Day Company, 1976.
Wardle, R.M., Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical
Biography, Lawrence: University of Kansas
Burney, F., The Journals and Letters of Fanny
Burney (Madame d'Arblay). Vols. I-IX ( J.
Hemlow et al., eds.). Oxford at the Clarendon
Press, 1975. (The chilling account of Burney's
mastectomy is given in letter No. 595 and the
French medical report, Vol. VI, pp. 596-616. The
operation took place on Sept. 30, 1811. Her letter
was written from March to May of 1812. The doctors'
report was written on Oct. 1, 1811.)
Burney, F., Evelina. London; Lowndes,
I am grateful to Margaret Culbertson, UH Art and
Architecture Library, for suggesting Burney as a
Image courtesy of Special
Collections, UH Library
The influence of Burney's early writings lasted a
long time. This is the title page of a 1904 edition
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
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