“I will wear my heart upon my sleeve”: Haunted Stages in Frances Burney’s Camilla

Abstract

This article explores the significance of the “disastrous buskins” who perform Othello in Book VIII of Frances Burney’s Camilla. Deploying the concept of “haunting,” the article reads the scene against theatrical history. It further argues that the scene introduces weightier concerns about what it means for Burney’s characters to “perform” themselves. With Dror Wahrman’s account of the rise of the modern self as an anchor, I contend that Burney’s novel implicitly questions how individual subjectivity is best stabilized and publically presented as unified, immutable, and non-fungible, especially when the “ghost” of other more performative versions of the self threaten to destabilize that effort. Lastly, the essay reads the privileging of the non-performative self (best embodied in Camilla’s sister Eugenia) as a sign that the novel is also invested in the notion of a “true” worth that is incontrovertible and fixed, one that is removed simultaneously from the vagaries of the stage and the marketplace.