Chawton House Library: Women's Novels
1 primary work
Book 4
Burney's last novel, The Romance of Private Life (1839) contains two striking tales. Based on her travels on the continent, The Renunciation presents a colourful picture of life abroad. An English girl travels to Italy in search of kin and supports herself as an artist, offering an early feminist heroine. The Hermitage is a gripping psychological thriller involving a ruined country maiden and an unsolved murder. With shades of the Gothic, it offers a case-study of the after-effects of trauma, anticipating the genre of the detective novel and challenging prevailing critical assumptions of the patriarchal origins of the genre.