Female Property and Independence in Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress
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Frances Burney, in Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), undertakes an extended critique of the male-centered construction of independence in modern civil society. In doing so, she highlights how women were sidelined from owning property as well as exercising the rights of the modern individual. I explore the concept of dominium from Roman law to examine how the modern conception of “individual” is rooted in male ownership of private property as the necessary condition for political independence. “The world” of Cecilia has no place for a young unmarried woman of means and the “Heiress” is ruthlessly stripped of all her property. Through repeated loss, Cecilia learns she cannot achieve dominium. Marriage is figured as the only way for women to achieve at least a symbolic mastery as Mistress within the domestic sphere. Whereas a woman’s incorporation into the dominium is in no way an absolute overturning of patriarchal dominance, Burney recreates the domestic sphere as a feminine one headed by the ethical leadership of women. Through the figure of the domina rather than the dominus, Cecilia recharts an alternative female narrative of property, ownership, and independence, ultimately presenting a female-centered dominium where matrilineal inheritance and sororal ties upend patriarchal values and fraternal bonds that exclude women.
Abstract
Frances Burney, in Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), undertakes an extended critique of the male-centered construction of independence in modern civil society. In doing so, she highlights how women were sidelined from owning property as well as exercising the rights of the modern individual. I explore the concept of dominium from Roman law to examine how the modern conception of “individual” is rooted in male ownership of private property as the necessary condition for political independence. “The world” of Cecilia has no place for a young unmarried woman of means and the “Heiress” is ruthlessly stripped of all her property. Through repeated loss, Cecilia learns she cannot achieve dominium. Marriage is figured as the only way for women to achieve at least a symbolic mastery as Mistress within the domestic sphere. Whereas a woman’s incorporation into the dominium is in no way an absolute overturning of patriarchal dominance, Burney recreates the domestic sphere as a feminine one headed by the ethical leadership of women. Through the figure of the domina rather than the dominus, Cecilia recharts an alternative female narrative of property, ownership, and independence, ultimately presenting a female-centered dominium where matrilineal inheritance and sororal ties upend patriarchal values and fraternal bonds that exclude women.
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