ABSTRACT
The eponymous protagonist of Burney’s epistolary novel is recurrently defined by her “simplicity”, a term which, in keeping with eighteenth-century conceptions of femininity, is used in a supposedly laudatory sense – she’s incapable of duplicity – but ultimately proves to be much more complex than what may first seem. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the heroine’s identity, mirrored as it is by those of three young girls of her age, all named “Polly” and all reflecting a greater or lesser extent on Evelina herself.
This chapter aims at exploring this multiplicity by focusing on the questions raised by the novel’s handling of epistolarity, by its heroine’s behaviour and in particular by the way she expresses herself. Following Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism and linguistic theories of irony and free indirect discourse, Anne Rouhette examines the various voices heard in Evelina, sometimes coming from the “simple” heroine herself, to reveal a discreet but unmistakable polyphony underneath an apparent monophony and articulate a reflection on the fundamental alterity within the self as portrayed by Burney.
