What is a Speech Act - Searle [1965]

Searle has introduced the notion of an 'indirect speech act', which in his account is meant to be, more particularly, an indirect 'illocutionary' act. Applying a conception of such illocutionary acts according to which they are (roughly) acts of saying something with the intention of communicating with an audience, he describes indirect speech acts as follows: "In indirect speech acts the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer." An account of such act, it follows, will require such things as an analysis of mutually shared background information about the conversation, as well as of rationality and linguistic conventions.

In connection with indirect speech acts, Searle introduces the notions of 'primary' and 'secondary' illocutionary acts. The primary illocutionary act is the indirect one, which is not literally performed. The secondary illocutionary act is the direct one, performed in the literal utterance of the sentence (Searle 178). In the example:

(1) Speaker X: "We should leave for the show or else we’ll be late."

(2) Speaker Y: "I am not ready yet."

Here the primary illocutionary act is Y's rejection of X's suggestion, and the secondary illocutionary act is Y's statement that she is not ready to leave. By dividing the illocutionary act into two subparts, Searle is able to explain that we can understand two meanings from the same utterance all the while knowing which is the correct meaning to respond to.

With his doctrine of indirect speech acts Searle attempts to explain how it is possible that a speaker can say something and mean it, but additionally mean something else. This would be impossible, or at least it would be an improbable case, if in such a case the hearer had no chance of figuring out what the speaker means (over and above what she says and means). Searle's solution is that the hearer can figure out what the indirect speech act is meant to be, and he gives several hints as to how this might happen. For the previous example a condensed process might look like this:

Step 1: A proposal is made by X, and Y responded by means of an illocutionary act (2).

Step 2: X assumes that Y is cooperating in the conversation, being sincere, and that she has made a statement that is relevant.

Step 3: The literal meaning of (2) is not relevant to the conversation.

Step 4: Since X assumes that Y is cooperating; there must be another meaning to (2).

Step 5: Based on mutually shared background information, X knows that they cannot leave until Y is ready. Therefore, Y has rejected X's proposition.

Step 6: X knows that Y has said something in something other than the literal meaning, and the primary illocutionary act must have been the rejection of X's proposal.

Searle argues that a similar process can be applied to any indirect speech act as a model to find the primary illocutionary act (178). His proof for this argument is made by means of a series of supposed "observations" (ibid., 180-182).

[edit]Analysis using Searle's theory

In order to generalize this sketch of an indirect request, Searle proposes a program for the analysis of indirect speech act performances, whatever they are. He makes the following suggestion:

Step 1: Understand the facts of the conversation.

Step 2: Assume cooperation and relevance on behalf of the participants.

Step 3: Establish factual background information pertinent to the conversation.

Step 4: Make assumptions about the conversation based on steps 1–3.

Step 5: If steps 1–4 do not yield a consequential meaning, then infer that there are two illocutionary forces at work.

Step 6: Assume the hearer has the ability to perform the act the speaker suggests. The act that the speaker is asking be performed must be something that would make sense for one to ask. For example, the hearer might have the ability to pass the salt when asked to do so by a speaker who is at the same table, but not have the ability to pass the salt to a speaker who is asking the hearer to pass the salt during a telephone conversation.

Step 7: Make inferences from steps 1–6 regarding possible primary illocutions.

Step 8: Use background information to establish the primary illocution (Searle 184).

With this process, Searle concludes that he has found a method that will satisfactorily reconstruct what happens when an indirect speech act is performed.

Austin – How to Do Things with Words [1955] (VIII & IX)

What happened thus far was this: in trying to search for a list of performative verbs, Austin stumbled over great many problems which gradually turned him away from the idea itself of a principled performative/constative distinction based on grammatical criterion (or even criteria). This eventually led him to distinguish the locutionary act, which was divided into the phonetic, phatic and rhetic act. When we perform a locutionary act, the ‘locution’ is (a) the phonetic act of making of certain noises, (b) the phatic act of uttering of certain words in linguistic constructions, (c) the rhetic act of the producing of meaning. In this lecture, Austin starts by making some further refinements, which prepare the introduction of the illocutionary and perlocutionary act. I believe it’s fair to say that this is the most important lecture so far.

If they’re still blurred, a good test for distinguishing the phatic act (b) from the rhetic act (c) is this: If one says ‘He said “The cat is on the mat”’, then one reports a phatic act – the uttering of certain words. If one says ‘He said that the cat is on the mat’, then one reports a rhetic act – the producing of meaning (of “sense and reference”, in a Fregean twist of phrase). Note that we can always report the phatic act by using quotation marks and the verb ‘said’, but we would want to report a, e.g., command or an exclamation, we would have to change the verb to “he told me to” or “he bade me welcome”. This stems from a deeper difference between the two acts, a difference which Austin spells out like this: “The pheme is a unit of language: its typical fault is to be nonsense – meaningless. But the rheme is a unit of speech: its typical fault is to be vague or void or obscure &c” (p. 98).
Phonetic Act (phone): series of bodily movements which result in the production of a certain sound.
Phatic Act (pheme): conforms to the lexical and grammatical conventions of English – that is, John has produced an English sentence. 
Rhetic Act (rheme): To use a pheme with meaning and reference.
Rhemes are a sub-class of phemes, which in turn are a sub-class of phones. One cannot perform a rheme without also performing a pheme and a phone. The performance of these three acts is the performance of a locution – it is the act of saying something.

As clear as the distinction between the pheme and the rheme may be, it is not in itself the main point; Austin is interested in a rather different sense in which to say something is to do something – the performative. So, we may have fully elucidated the locutionary act in ‘It is going to charge’ and still not be aware, as language users, if the speaker was performing the act of warning or not. To say something about that, we must distinguish the locutionary act from the illocutionary act: the illocutionary act is “in what way we are using the locution” (p. 98). Some examples of illocutionary acts are: ‘asking a question’, ‘announcing a verdict’, ‘making a criticism’, ‘giving a description or a definition’ etc. These different uses are called the forces with which the locutionary acts are used and this is the basis for the separation of force from meaning: We perform an act of saying something with a certain meaning, but we perform an act in saying something with a certain force. The noun ‘use’ here, Austin observes, is “hopelessly ambiguous” and can stand for both acts.

There is another way in which to say something is to do something: To say something is often (and, Austin notes, “even normally”), the producing of certain consequential effects, which can, but need not, be achieved intentionally. This is the perlocutionary act or simply perlocution. So, if the locution is the saying of ‘You can’t do that!’ and the illocution is the act of denying, or protesting against, or interdicting or whatever, then the perlocution is the act of persuading, or bringing to senses or stopping etc. Note that all three can be reported:

(A) Locution: He said to me, ‘You can’t do that!’

(B) Illocution: He protested against my doing that

(C) Perlocution: He brought me to my senses.

Austin makes a remark (p. 103) which is very important in the economy of these lectures: he says that, even if we can describe both B and C, that is, both the illocution and the perlocution, as ‘uses’ of language, the former may be said to be conventional, “in the sense that at least it could be made explicit by the performative formula”, while the latter cannot. The force is conventional, just as meaning partly is. So we can say ‘I (hereby) protest against you doing that’ but we cannot say ‘I (hereby) convince you that …’ Austin concludes: “the illocutionary act is a conventional one: an act done as conforming to a convention”.

The intricate relationships between locution, illocution and perlocution: For instance, perlocution is the consequential effect, but, one might wonder, the consequential effect of what? and how far can we co to extend the consequences? Deeper: what do we mean by consequence? We would certainly like to leave out the idea that the illocution is the consequence of the locution, but then we would equally like to say that there is a certain “regular point” at which the perlocution “breaks” from the illocution – the former being the consequence of the latter (p. 111).

The fact that we have names (i.e. verbs) for illocution should point to the idea that what we name when we name linguistic activity is the convention, not the consequence: “the conventions of certain illocutionary force as bearing on the special circumstances of the occasion of the issuing of the utterance” (p. 114). Still, one cannot simply overlook the fact that the illocution without a certain type of effect is infelicitous (‘unhappy’, ‘unsuccessful’). So, how to distinguish the consequence of persuading from the ‘certain type of effect’ of understanding an utterance? Even semantically, one could find oneself at pains distinguishing the two: what words to we use?

Since understanding (as opposed to any perlocutionary act) could be restated as ‘to take what has been said in a certain sense’ Austin settles this ‘certain type of effect’ as the uptake. We say that an illocutionary act, in order to be felicitous, must “secure an uptake” (p. 116). As a matter of fact, there are two more ways in which the illocution is ‘bound up’ with the effects – all of which can be separated from the perlocution itself.

How to Do Things With Words - Austin

For example: John Smith turns to Sue Snub and says ‘Is Jeff’s shirt red?’, to which Sue replies ‘Yes’. John has produced a series of bodily movements which result in the production of a certain sound. Austin called such a performance a phonetic act, and called the act a phone. John’s utterance also conforms to the lexical and grammatical conventions of English – that is, John has produced an English sentence. Austin called this a phatic act, and labels such utterances phemes. John also referred to Jeff’s shirt, and to the colour red. To use a pheme with a more or less definite sense and reference is to utter a rheme, and to perform a rhetic act. Note that rhemes are a sub-class of phemes, which in turn are a sub-class of phones. One cannot perform a rheme without also performing a pheme and a phone. The performance of these three acts is the performance of a locution – it is the act of saying something.

John has therefore performed a locutionary act. He has also done at least two other things. He has asked a question, and he has elicited an answer from Sue.

Illocutionary act: an assertion, giving an order, and promising to do something. To perform an illocutionary act is to use a locution with a certain force. It is an act performed in saying something, in contrast with a locution, the act of saying something.

Eliciting an answer is a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. Notice that if one successfully performs a perlocution, one also succeeds in performing both an illocution and a locution.

Attention has especially focused on the illocutionary act, much less on the locutionary and perlocutionary act, and only rarely on the subdivision of the locution into phone, pheme and rheme.

"Camilla" - Summary

Camilla focuses on the story of the Tyrold family. Augustus ("Mr Tyrold") and Sir Hugh Tyrold are brothers who, after a period of estrangement lasting an unspecified number of years, are reunited after Sir Hugh sends Mr Tyrold a letter expressing his desire to move near his parsonage, requesting him to purchase an estate called Cleves and prepare it for the arrival of Sir Hugh, his niece Indiana Lynmere, and her governess Miss Margland (his other ward, Clermont Lynmere, is to be sent to "the Continent" to be educated). His primary motivation for the move is that after years of being an active bachelor and confirmed bachelor, he suddenly finds himself injured and too physically weak to partake of the active physical and social life he once enjoyed. Forced to find entertainment and solace in more sedentary ways, he finds himself woefully unprepared and further engages Mr Tyrold to engage a tutor. Mr Tyrold complies and hires Dr Orkborne, a man better suited to private academic pursuits than pedagogy. This plan proves to be untenable and Sir Hugh is left scrambling to find a permanent "scholar" to place under Orkborne's tutelage, not wanting to offend the academic by dismissing him so soon after dragging him all the way out to Cleves.

In the meantime, Sir Hugh becomes enchanted by his brother's middle daughter, Camilla, and decides to make her heiress to most of his fortune. He also requests the privilege of raising her, which makes Mr and Mrs Tyrold uneasy because as much as they value Sir Hugh's kindness and generosity, they both find him unsuitable as a guardian as he is too indulgent and desirous to please. Nevertheless, they allow Camilla to go to Cleves. It is there that Camilla's brother Lionel, elder sister, Lavinia, and younger sister, Eugenia, and her father's ward, Edgar Mandelbert, go to celebrate Camilla's tenth birthday.

Mrs Tyrold allowed Eugenia to join the festivities only on the promise that the party of young people are not leave the grounds of Cleves because the girl had not yet been inoculated against smallpox. Unfortunately, Lionel's mischievous and restless nature leads him to convince his uncle to allow the entire party of children to go to a fair. It is here that Eugenia is exposed to and contracts smallpox. Eugenia is disfigured but survives, only to suffer a tragic see-saw accident which leaves her further maimed and crippled. Naturally, this leads Sir Hugh to disown not only Camilla but all of his nieces and nephews in favor of making Eugenia his sole heiress. He justifies this sweeping action by arranging an eventual marriage between Eugenia and Clermont Lynmere. In the meantime, he consigns Eugenia's education to Dr Orkbourne so that if she will not be a beautiful bride, she will at least be a highly intelligent one able to entertain and engage her future husband in what he calls hic hæc hoc -- that is, is to receive the same sort of intensive, classical education that was at the time more generally given to boys and rarely (if ever) to girls. Though at first dismissive of the idea of educating girls in general and the teaching of Greek and Latin to females in particular, Dr Orkbourne discovers that Eugenia is not only an enthusiastic student but one who is also extremely intelligent and capable.

At first, Edgar Mandelbert finds himself drawn to Indiana's exquisite beauty. Sir Hugh decides that despite their young ages (13 and ten respectively), Edgar and Indiana are clearly destined for each other. This means that Sir Hugh spends much of the early part of the novel waiting and planning for the day when Edgar and Clermont leave off their educations and finishing tours of the Continent so that they may marry Indiana and Eugenia.

When Edgar does finish his education and reaches the age of majority, he leaves university to take over the running of his finances and estate, Beech Park, from his guardian, Mr Tyrold. In re-acquainting himself with the Tyrold sisters and Indiana, Edgar finds himself drawn to Camilla. She also finds herself drawn to Edgar. Unfortunately, the mortifying realization that he is considered to be Indiana's intended complicates his attempts at courtship until he can resolve the misunderstanding. Even so, the machinations of Miss Margland, the jealousy of Indiana, circumstances in general (including Camilla's misadventures in navigating country society and new acquaintances such as the dim-witted Mr Dubster, the rakish Sir Sedley Clarendel, and the beautiful, reputable, witty, but lamentably satirical widow Mrs Arlbery) and Edgar's judgmental nature in particular serve to make his wooing of Camilla extremely protracted. He finally wins Camilla's hand only to relinquish it almost immediately after catching Camilla's debasement at the lips of Sir Sedley Clarendel.

Clarendel, a frivolous and flirtatious baronet, in having been mortified to have fallen in love with Camilla, tried to save face by protesting that he had no serious designs on Camilla's affections or pretensions to marriage with her. Once done, he kisses the confused girl's hand. Edgar witnesses this with the same level of revulsion and astonishment usually reserved for catching one's grandparents in the act of sexual congress, which naturally offends Camilla. She frees him from their engagement and with her father's blessing and encouragement, removes to Southampton to visit her new friend, Mrs Berlington with Eugenia, Indiana, and Miss Margland following behind a few hours later to provide company and proper supervision. This is, of course, taken by Edgar as further sign that Camilla is capricious, weak, frivolous, and above all a debased flirt. Dr Marchmont, Edgar's tutor and mentor in matters of the heart, encourages these assumptions.

While Camilla suffers through one misadventure after the other, her sister Eugenia attracts the notice of fortune hunter Alphonso Bellamy. He appeals to Miss Margland's vanity by flattering her into pleading his case to Eugenia and Sir Hugh and eventually asks Sir Hugh for Eugenia's hand. He is refused, not being known to Sir Hugh nor particularly welcome as Eugenia is intended for Clermont.

Bellamy eventually kidnaps Eugenia and forces her into marriage, Edgar eventually stops listening to the misogynistic Dr Marchmont, Camilla falls into and gets out of debt, Lionel is forced to give up frivolity, Sir Hugh is nearly bankrupted by his nephews, and Mr Tyrold spends some time in debtor's prison. But all ends well as Bellamy accidentally kills himself, Mr Tyrold is freed, Camilla and Edgar are married, Lavinia marries Hal Westwyn, Indiana elopes with a penniless hotheaded military ensign called Macdersey, Clermont gets beaten by a servant he unfairly tried to whip, and Eugenia (it is hinted) eventually marries Mr Melmond, a man whose fine education and extremely emotional outbursts had won her heart early in the novel.

"Camilla" - Main Characters

Main characters

Camilla is the seventeen year old protagonist of the novel. She is in love with Edgar Mandlebert but frequent misunderstandings prevent their union.
Frances Burney decided on the name 'Camilla' for her heroine shortly before the novel's publication. At one time she was called Clarinda, but most frequently Ariella. As late as 15 July 1795, Frances Burney wrote to her brother Charles to say, 'The name of my heroine is ARIELLA.' Dr. Burney, however, objecting to the name Ariella, the novelist struck out the name Ariella and wrote in Camilla.
Camilla is very pretty, though not as exquisitely beautiful as Indiana. She is generous (caring about poor people and the singing bird that was "pinched"), cheerful spirited, sincere, and very emotional. She loves her family dearly. Her naive simplicity and admiration can sometimes lead her into danger, such as when she makes friends with the witty and eccentric Mrs. Arlbery, or the beautiful and romantic Mrs. Berlinton. Her brother Lionel calls her "the best girl in the world, when she did not mount the pulpit."
Edgar Mandlebert is a ward of Mr. Tyrold. He is in possession of a large inheritance and estate at Beech Park. He is handsome, chivalrous, and in love with Camilla but must first make sure that she is as virtuous and worthy of his esteem as he wants her to be, especially since some of her actions, though innocent, have the appearance of coquetting. At his best, he is an uncertain lover too easily led astray by the misogynistic Dr Marchmont. At his worst—and sadly, too frequent—he is judgmental and cold; too prudish for his generation and even that preceding him. He is nearly as superficial as Indiana, though his shallowness takes a different bent. Obsessed with being upright and several times described by other characters in the novel as "nice" and "peculiar" (that is, fastidious and particular), he cares more about the appearance of what is proper and is disinclined to probe for any deeper meaning or to ask for (much less accept) any explanation. He makes baseless assumption after baseless assumption. When he does not, Dr Marchmont does for him, always tending to whatever makes others, especially Camilla, appear in the worst possible light.
Eugenia is Camilla's fifteen year old sister. As a result of Sir Hugh's actions at the beginning of the novel she is crippled and bears smallpox pits: therefore, though she had originally been the prettiest of the Tyrold sisters, she is now the plainest. Because of this Sir Hugh leaves the entirety of his fortune to her after his death. Her mind, however, is intelligent while being very innocent; and her heart is extremely gentle, merciful, and humble. Sir Hugh Tyrold attempts to keep from her all knowledge of her own personal defects, and therefore she is the more shocked at some peasant women's coarse insults to her. Mr. Tyrold, however, teaches her that beauty is superficial, by showing her a beautiful but mad woman. Her generosity and freedom from selfish jealousy astonishes Melmond when she gives him up to Indiana, even trying to help their marriage financially.
Lavinia is Camilla's nineteen year old sister. The book describes her as:

Her polished complexion was fair, clear, and transparent; her features were of the extremest delicacy, her eyes of the softest blue, and her smile displayed internal serenity. The unruffled sweetness of her disposition bore the same character of modest excellence...the meekness of her composition degernated not into insensibility; it was open to all the feminine of pity, of sympathy, and of tenderness.

She later earns well-deserved happiness with Hal Westwyn, Sir Hugh Tyrold's close friend's son, an amiable and chivalrous young man. Her personality is very gentle, modest, and sympathizing, but a fine sense of morality points out to her the error of her brother Lionel's ways, which cost her many a remonstrating, but ineffectual, sigh.
Lionel is Camilla's older brother. He is very mischievous and enjoys practical jokes. Later on his violent spirits and lack of morals carry him too far. He is dearly loved by all his sisters, especially Camilla, but his shameless sefishness taxes her affection severely by making her sacrifice much happiness for his benefit.
Indiana Lynmere is Camilla's seventeen year old cousin under the care of Sir Hugh. She is exquisitely beautiful but shallow and selfish, and has a taste for flirting. She is very easily flattered by eloquent compliments, but her heart not being deep or passionate, she is not very constant.
Clermont Lynmere is Camilla's cousin under the care of Sir Hugh. He is at school for most of the novel and when he returns is found to be brutish and rude, and is one of the only people in the book who actually makes Sir Hugh Tyrold anything near angry. He is extremely aggravating towards servants, and is very violent. Mr. Westwyn heartily disapproves of him and is rather satisfied when Clermont's selfish brutality lands him in a fight.
Sir Hugh Tyrold is Camilla's uncle who lives at Cleves. He is uneducated but very good natured and sweet tempered, with good morals and an excellent heart. Camilla is his favourite niece, her sprightliness and lively sweetness endearing her to him. He is very generous and charitable. However, his naiveness sometimes entangles those whom he wishes best: for instance, he wants Edgar to marry Indiana, and Clermont to marry Eugenia; however, both hopes are unfulfilled - Edgar marries Camilla, which he rejoices in, and Eugenia marries Melmond. At the end of the book, his new matchmaking hopes have landed on Miss Margland and Dr. Orkbourne.
Mr. Tyrold is Camilla's father whom she lives with at Etherington. He is a pastor and is very well respected by his daughters. He has a kind, gentle temper, strengthened by steady sense.
Mrs. Tyrold is Camilla's mother. She is revered by her daughters, and she loves her husband. However, sometimes her perfectionism frightens Camilla: for instance, when Camilla has landed her father in prison because of her debts, she thinks she can muster up courage to beg her father and uncle's forgiveness, but at the thought of going near her mother, she is almost frightened out of her senses. Mrs. Tyrold has a truly good heart, however, and she kindly forgives Camilla in the end.
Miss Margland is the governess at Cleves. She is Indiana's almost constant companion and an annoyance to Sir Hugh and Dr. Orkbourne. Scornful and selfish, her greatest object is to go to London again, and when she is dismayed by Edgar's preference for Camilla, she has no scruples in treating her with indelicate cruelty herself, and egging Indiana to do the same.
Dr. Orkbourne is Eugenia's teacher at Cleves. He is interested almost solely in his studies. The servants think he is "cracked," but Sir Hugh insists they respect Dr. Orkbourne. Eugenia respects him.
Dr. Marchmont is an advisor and friend to Edgar. He is extremely skeptical of women based on his past experiences, and though honest and kind, he continually dissuades Edgar from proposing to Camilla, and cautions him.
Mrs. Arlbery is a friend of Camilla. Her status as a widow allows her to have much more freedom than generally allowed to women at the time. She enjoys bossing fashionable men around with ridiculous orders. Her sense of satire aside, she is the only one who sees Edgar Mandlebert for the emotional coward he really is, explaining perfectly his faults to a disbelieving Camilla.
Sir Sedley Clarendel is a friend of Mrs Arlberry. He is a baronet whose fortune of £15,000 per annum makes him wealthier than Mandlebert as well as his social superior. However, Sir Sedley's foppish manners prove initially repulsive to Camilla. Eventually, Camilla's sweet disposition, breeding, disinterestedness, and loveliness penetrate through Sir Sedley's foppish facade, leading to acts of generosity and a genuine admiration for her. Camilla is often too flustered to seriously withstand his attentions and her brother Lionel too often encourages Sir Sedley in the hopes that it will lead to many generous gifts of money once the baronet is married to Camilla. Upon finding that his attentions and hand are unwanted, he feigns a horror of any serious design on Camilla and flees to the Hebrides.

Melmond is a school acquaintance of Lionel's. He falls in love with Indiana before speaking to her, saying, "...she is all I ever read of! all I ever conceived! she is beauty in its very essence! she is elegance, delicacy, and sensibility personified!' To which even the thoughtless Lionel replies, 'All very true...but how should you know anything of her besides her beauty?'. Eugenia develops a crush on him because of his studious nature and fervent love of literature. Sometimes his romantic passions carry him away, as in the case of Indiana, but he has a good heart and principles underneath.
Mrs. Berlinton is a sixteen year old friend of Camilla's and Melmond's sister. Camila describes her to Edgar as "attractive, gentle, amiable." She was forced to marry a much older man by her aunt but continues a correspondence with a mystery male. She is very beautiful and her sweetness of manners are captivating, which makes Camilla enraptured with her. She is very romantic, just like Melmond, but without the firmness of his principles: thus she sinks into gambling, flirting, and immoral "friendships."
Jacob is a faithful old family servant, who adores his master, Sir Hugh Tyrold. He speaks affectionately of Camilla to Edgar, loves his master, and is plain-spoken to Clermont Lynmere.
Nicholas Gwigg (Alphonso Bellamy): the younger son of the master of a great gaming-house. In his first youth, he had been utterly neglected, and run wild; but his father afterwards becoming rich, had bestowed on him as good an education as the late business with which it had begun could possibly give (it was pity, perhaps, that the education did not include morals). He tried gaming, but spending as fast as he earned, he acquired nothing; and once, in a tide of disfavor, he had cheated, and been found out. His father dead, his elder brother passive, he went to London, hoping to elope with some heiress by relying on his handsome face and lots of compliments. In the process he changed his name to Alphonso Bellamy. He had first met with the beautiful Mrs. Berlinton, and though this would not make him any money, her romantic turn of mind and loveliness tempted him to a scheme yet darker. They had exchanged letters with each other after she left, and soon after he forced Eugenia to marry him by shocking her gentleness of disposition with a suicidal threat. He treated her cruelly, yelling at her and trying to force her to write to her uncle for money, and continuing his heinous correspondence, and even meeting with, Mrs. Berlinton. Several unpleasant debts of honor being claimed, he had tried to force Eugenia to write to her uncle for money by putting a gun to her head and saying he would kill himself immediately after she was dead. Terrified, she was beginning to agree, when the alarmed postillion shouted out, "Hold, villain! or you are a dead man!" His hand shook—the gun went off—and he dropped dead. His behavior to Eugenia throughout was selfish, unfeeling, and brutally cruel. At first, Eugenia really believed in his passion for her, and though refusing to accept it, she sincerely pitied him and would not suspect him. After the marriage, she found out what he was really like, but refused to persecute him in court ("Solemn has been my vow! sacred I must hold it!")
Mr. Westwyn: A good hearted old man and very close friend of Sir Hugh Tyrold. Though not so gentle or sweet tempered as his friend, he is affectionate and unassumingly plain spoken. He is very strict with his son, Hal, but clearly loves him dearly. He treats Clermont with well-deserved contempt, saying, "That person...is a fellow I have prodigious longing to give a good caning to." He takes a great liking to Camilla at first, but when he observes her seemingly coquettish behavior (in reality she was just making a naive mistake in the process of trying to repulse Hal's affection), his partiality for her soon cools. Later he grows delighted with Lavinia, who is "pretty near as pretty" as her sister, and whose gentle sweetness wins his blunt heart over.

Cixous: "The Laugh of the Medusa" (1975)

"Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies" because their sexual pleasure has been repressed and denied expression.
Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.
-- "The Laugh of the Medusa"
Cixous is issuing her female readers an ultimatum of sorts: either they can read it and choose to stay trapped in their own bodies by a language that does not allow them to express themselves, or they can use their bodies as a way to communicate.
Dense with literary allusions, "The Laugh of the Medusa" is an exhortation to a "feminine mode" of writing; the phrases "white ink" and "écriture féminine" are often cited, referring to this desired new way of writing. It is a strident critique of logocentrism and phallogocentrism. The essay also calls for an acknowledgment of universal bisexuality or polymorphous perversity, a precursor of queer theory's later emphases, and swiftly rejects many kinds of essentialism which were still common in Anglo-American feminism at the time. Cixous's style of writing is richly intertextual, making a wide range of literary allusions. Critics have suggested that Cixous's arguments in "The Laugh of the Medusa," rather than liberating women, give ammunition to traditional sexist arguments that women are incapable of rational thought.


Écriture féminine: literally "women's writing," more closely, the inscription of the female body and female 
difference in language and text. Generally, French feminists tended to focus their attention on language, analyzing the ways in which meaning is produced. They concluded that language as we commonly think of it is a decidedly male realm, which therefore only represents a world from the male point of view.
Hélène Cixous first coined écriture féminine in her essay, "The Laugh of the Medusa". Inspired by Cixous' essay, a recent book titled Laughing with Medusa (2006) analyzes the collective work of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bracha Ettinger and Hélène Cixous. These writers are as a whole referred to by Anglophones as "the French feminists". And when asked of her own writing she says,"I am there where the female unconscious speaks."
- Phallogocentric: Focused on or concerned with the phallus or penis as a symbol of male dominance; centered on men or on a male viewpoint, especially one held to entail the domination of women by men.
- Logocentrism: structuralist method of analysis, esp. of literary works, that focuses on words & language to the exclusion of non-linguistic matters--such as an author's individuality or historical context; excessive attention paid to the meanings of words or distinctions in their usage.


Cixous: “Je suis là où ça parle”—ça=id/it/the female unconscious. ("I am there where the female unconscious speaks.") [how does this differ from surrealism?]
Focus turns to sexuality, and physical body, as site for subversion of  order; need to express sexuality: need to express femaleness as female sexuality (Cixous, Irigaray): thus to establish “site of difference” from which “phallogocentric concepts and controls can be seen through and taken apart” in theory and practice.
Site of difference is in female unconscious; psycho-sexual specificity defines difference. Like Irigaray concern over female oppression, need for id-liberated female discourse. Source of force in libido (sexual desire) rather than socio-cultural factors. “Masculine sexuality gravitates around the penis, engendering that centralized body (in political anatomy) under the dictatorship of its parts, woman does not bring about the same regionalization which serves the couple head/genitals and which is inscribed only within its boundaries. Her libido (sexual desire) is cosmic, just as her unconscious is worldwide”.

For Cixous, l’écriture féminine: “her writing can only keep going, without ever inscribing or discerning contours . . . . she lets the other language speak—the language of 1,000 tongues which knows neither enclosure nor death . . . her language does not contain, it carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible". Focus on bodily experience as oppositional to phallic/symbolic order, emphasizing female sexuality & genital/libidinal difference from men. With Cixous this becomes “write the body!”

The Laugh of the Medusa (1975)--In this text, Cixous expands the concept of feminine writing by claiming its proximity to voice. She says that this writing should take place in the between, which is an abstract space that has no loyalty to opposing terms.
Cixous uses her poetic genius and academic savvy to create a text that is brilliantly effective in many ways. First, she succeeds in giving the reader a concept of feminine writing but convinces us that in actually defining of the term, we destroy its beauty. She also manages to give us an example of what this text might be like in her illusive and circular style, but still writes academically enough to be included in most major surveys of rhetoric, literary criticism, and feminist theory.
Overall Theoretical Approach
Much of Cixous' theory relies heavily on Freudian and Greek mythology in attempts to topple the narrative myths that dominate our culture. Cixous' believes that in order to escape the discourse of mastery we must begin to write the body. To Cixous, our sexuality and the language in which we communicate are inextricably linked. To free one means freedom for the other. To write from one's body is to flee reality, "to escape hierarchical bonds and thereby come closer to what Cixous calls joissance., which can be defined as a virtually metaphysical fulfillment of desire that goes far beyond [mere] satisfaction... [It is a] fusion of the erotic, the mystical, and the political". The implications of this philosophy to the rhetorical theories we have studied so far is, believe it or not, quite practical. It can be seen when we look at the large number of rhetoricians who believe that our language structures create meaning, whether at the argumentative level or the syntactical level. Ohmann's description of the new rhetoric as "the pursuit,-- not simply the transmission--of truth and right" and Scott's belief that "truth is not prior and immutable but is contingent" also supports this idea. For Cixous, then, the logical structure of our discourse protects those who occupy the privledged position in dichotomous terms by making hierarchical positions seem natural. By writing the body, she hopes to explode this linearity.
Criticism on Cixous
Some criticize Cixous for being essentialist, that she "reduces women to an essence ... and thus negates the possibility of the very change which she seeks to promote" (Shiach 17)
Other feminists have difficulty with her reclaiming of the maternal, as a starting place for her engagement with the politics of sexual difference. They fear that reclaiming the naturalness of motherhood, something with which women have been historically oppressed (Stanton 157-182).
- http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/cixous_intro.html

Cecilia Summary

The plot of her second attempt, though still conventional, was somewhat more ambitious. Miss Cecilia Beverley, a young lady in her twenty-first year, is heir, not only to ten thousand pounds from her father, but to 3,000 per annum from her uncle, the Dean of , to which latter inheritance is attached the restrictive condition that, should she marry, the happy man must take her name as well as her money. This turns out to be a very material detail in the novel. When the story begins, the Dean of is just dead; and Miss Beverley and her fortune, during the brief remainder of her minority, are left in the hands of three guardians— a fashionable and extravagant Mr. Harrel, a vulgar and miserly Mr. Briggs, and a very proud and pompous Mr. Delvile (of Delvile Castle). In the first chapter of the story, Cecilia is quitting Mrs. Charlton, with whom she has been staying, to take up her quarters in town with the Harrels, — Mrs. Harrel, in her green and salad days, having been the heroine's "most favourite young friend." In London, where would-be suitors — most of them attracted to the beaux yeux de sa cassette — cluster about her like flies round a honey pot, she speedily becomes aware that the playmate of her youth is terribly "translated" by the dissipations of a London life, that her friend's husband is an irredeemable gamester, and that both are palpably on the down-grade. Her available means become speedily involved in Harrel's ever-urgent necessities; and the crisis of this part of the narrative is reached, about the middle of volume three, by his suicide in a very melodramatic fashion at Vauxhall Gardens, where, for the nonce, the chief personages in the book are ingeniously assembled. After Harrel's death, Cecilia goes to stay at Delvile Castle. Here an attachment already begun with the son, Mortimer Delvile, a young man at once excitable and irresolute, is further developed. But now the dead hand comes in. The haughty Delviles cannot bring themselves to consent to the change of the family name, even "for a consideration " of £3000 per annum. There are consequently scenes, in one of which Mrs. Delvile, after using extremely exaggerated expressions, exclaims "My brain is on fire!" — and breaks a blood vessel. Eventually, after she has been softened by illness, a suggestion is made that Cecilia shall surrender her" uncle's fortune, with its vexatious obligations, and content herself with her Mortimer and her patrimony of ten thousand pounds. Unfortunately for this proposition, the ten thousand pounds in question are now non-existent, having been, absorbed by the creditors of Harrel and others, — that is to say, by the Jews. After this, a private marriage takes place, with the connivance of Mrs. Delvile. But Cecilia's troubles are not yet at an end. Fresh and very unforeseen complications arise, and, for a brief period, she goes as mad as Clementina or Clarissa. At length the curtain comes down upon a Johnsonian passage in which she is left exhibiting the pensive and reluctant optimism of Easselas.

If, in the foregoing rapid summary, it has not always been possible to speak with uniform gravity, it is that, today, the main issue of Cecilia's story has become — as the author's own Captain Aresby would now have said — a little dhnodi. In the present year of grace, it is difficult to comprehend the social conditions which should prevent a sensible man from marrying the woman he loves (particularly if that woman have £3000 a year) simply because the concomitant surrender of his family name would — as Mrs. Delvile puts it — bring "the blood of his wronged ancestors into his guilty cheeks." But when Cecilia was written, this was an other-guess matter; and the point was not only seriously argued by bishops, peers and ladies of quality, but was thought by no means undeserving of anxious consideration. A noble Lord, who descended from Elfrida, and had a castle in Warwickshire, was distinctly of opinion that the obstructive attitude of Mr. Delvile pere was a correct one; while Mrs. Thrale, who dated from Adam of Salzburg — one of the companions of the Conqueror — was equally convinced that her mother, Mrs. Salusbury, would have done just what Mrs. Delvile did. But this debatable point apart, Cecilia's story is unquestionably clever. The characters — and there are a crowd of them — are clearly drawn and discriminated; the pictures of contemporary social life are varied and very lively, while the famous Vauxhall episode, if it be not precisely the tragic masterpiece which it seemed to the fond eyes of admiring "Daddy" Crisp, certainly contrives to hold the reader in a genuine suspense of curiosity until the final event is reached. The discussion between the mother and son, — the other "crack scene" of the book — that, indeed, for which the author declares she wrote the whole, Mr. Crisp did not approve so much, and he was right. If it did not impress him, it impresses us still less. Mrs. Delvile's stormy heroics seem out of all proportion to the gravity of the matter in hand, and an unsympathetic reader, bewildered by the hail of commination, may well be forgiven for wondering whether the cause is worthy of the clamour. Nevertheless Miss Burney, in clinging to her convictions in regard to "name-compelling" wills, as well as in declining to end her book "like the hack Italian operas, with a jolly chorus that makes all parties good and all parties happy," was only acting in strict accordance with the injunctions, received from more than one adviser, to rely upon her own instincts, and not to depart from them, when her mind was made up. And it is a feature of her character, that, notwithstanding her undoubted distrust of her powers, she was sometimes as restive and intractable under criticism as Richardson himself.

The two scenes above indicated are those which are most frequently referred to by Miss Burney's critics. But there are others which, if not as highly-wrought, are as worthy of praise. The opera rehearsal, — at which it was said the book always opened, — the description of the ton parties, the long masquerade chapter, and the dialogue between Albany, Briggs and Hobson on Charity (which may be compared with that on the same subject between Parson Adams and Mr. Peter Pounce in Joseph Andrews), are well worth reading. But the names remind us that Miss Burney is, primarily, what Johnson called her, a "charactermonger," and that her plot is subordinate to her personages. Some of these, in spite of her protests, she had evidently seen in the flesh; some she had half-seen or overheard; some she had wholly invented from current social characteristics. Mr. Meadows, the absentminded and affectedly-indifferent, and Captain Aresby, who interlards his conversation with French words like the coming Silver Fork School and the lady in Thackeray's AlmacWs Adieu — are probably examples from the last category. Mr. Monckton and the supercilious Sir Robert Floyer, the caustic Mr. Gosport and the voluble Miss Larolles, she had doubtless met; while in those days of gaming and E.O. tables, she had probably heard of many Mr. Harrels. As to the miserly and penurious Briggs (and the facility with which one can label Miss Burney's characters with defining adjectives indicates one of her limitations), the consensus of contemporary criticism seems to have decided that he was overdrawn. But he is certainly not more exaggerated than some of the later characters of Dickens, and he is distinctly amusing, especially in his encounters with "Don Pedigree," as he calls his colleague, Mr. Delvile. Hobson the builder, with his large and puffy presence, his red waistcoat, and his round curled wig, is a capital specimen of the bumptious prosperous tradesman; while the thin, mean-looking, cringing and obsequious Mr. Simkins (the hosier) is another excellently observed and contrasted variety. Morrice, the pushing and officious young lawyer, the versatile Belfield, and that vivacious "agreeable Rattle" of rank, Lady Honoria Pemberton, can only be named. Lastly — for we must omit others altogether — comes Johnson's favourite Albany, — a cross between Apemantus and Solomon Eagle, — whose stagy denunciations certainly warrant the ingenuous inquiry of Mr. Hobson whether "the gentleman might be speaking something by heart." There should be an original for Albany; but he has not been definitely revealed.

Cecilia is more elaborate and much more mature than Evelina. It is also more skilfully constructed, and more carefully, though not so naturally, written. But it is certainly too long; and towards the close suggests something of the hurry imposed upon the author by her eager father. It must also be confessed that the last chapters are scarcely as interesting as their forerunners. As to the success of the book with its first audience, however, there can be no doubt. Anxiously awaited, it was welcomed with the warmest enthusiasm by numbers of readers; and by no one more splendidly and royally than by Edmund Burke, whose acquaintance Fanny had made at Sir Joshua's not very long before it appeared. When it came out, Burke wrote her a long letter, which was reprinted with subsequent editions. Few (he told her), let their experience in life and manners be what it might, would not find themselves better informed concerning human nature, and their stock of observation enriched, by reading Cecilia. "You have," he went on, " crowded into a few small volumes an incredible variety of characters; most of them well planned, well supported, and well contrasted with each other. If there be any fault in this respect, it is one in which you are in no great danger of being imitated. Justly as your characters are drawn, perhaps they are too numerous. But I beg pardon; I fear it is quite in vain to preach economy to those who are come young to excessive and sudden opulence." Praising her humour, her pathos, her "comprehensive and noble moral," and her sagacious observations, he concluded, — "In an age distinguished by producing extraordinary women, I hardly dare to tell you where my opinion would place you amongst them. I respect your modesty, that will not endure the commendations which your merit forces from everybody." A few months later, she met Burke at the house of the Hon. Miss Monckton (the "Lydia White" of that age), when he was equally kind, though he ventured upon some criticisms. He thought the masquerade scene too long, and that something might be spared from Harrel's grand assembly; he did not like Morrice's part at the Pantheon; * and he wished the conclusion "either more happy or more miserable." With this last Fanny — as we have already seen — could not coincide; but he promptly consoled her by another compliment. Nothing had struck him so much as the admirable skill with which her ingenious characters made themselves known by their own words; and he congratulated her upon her conquest of some of the old wits, because of the difficulty of giving satisfaction to those who piqued themselves on being past receiving it. Also, he touched upon the amount she had obtained from Payne and Cadell for the copyright, which he evidently knew. "Why did you not send for your own friend out of the city [i.e. Mr. Briggs]? He would have taken care you should not part with it [Cecilia] so much below par."