Le silence de la musique dans The Wanderer de Frances Burney

Frances Burney’s heroines often find refuge in a voluntary silence that contributes to a definition of their femininity: often compelled to refrain from speaking in the society of the time, woman dialectically assumes the power of silence in order to dispute the (masculine) violence of society. In The Wanderer (1814), Burney’s last novel, the heroine Juliet, a wandering woman and outstanding musician, elevates her silence into an aesthetics, and her music seems to be a possible modality of silence. Through both her verbal silence and her music, Juliet establishes a locus where she can find herself again. Her musicalized silence both shelters her and helps her to find her bearings again. In this long-winded and prolix novel, silence triggers an aesthetic principle of contrast, disruption and discrepancy.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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