Camilla

Camilla is the title character of Frances (“Fanny”) Burney’s highly popular novel, “Camilla, A Picture of Youth”, first published in 1796. The novel concerns the romantic escapades of Camilla and her fiancé, with overtones of an eighteenth century take on the generation gap. She is a pretty, spirited, generous and cheerful seventeen-year old in love with Edgar Mandlebert. As with the usual path of true love, nothing seems to run smoothly, and mistakes and misunderstandings litter that path. Camilla’s uncle, Sir Hugh, who loves to meddle in family affairs, decides that Edgar is a good match for his other niece, Indiana. Edgar, while drawn to Camilla, takes a friend’s advice, and looks for her flaws, while Camilla, although in love with him, takes her father’s advice and keeps her feelings from him. After many plot diversions and thickenings, the young lovers are paired, and everyone else is also neatly tied to an appropriate partner; financial woes are dispensed with, properties are settled, educations are accomplished and all ends well. Miss Burney was said to have been an influence on Jane Austen; be that as it may, Camilla, although a delightful character, is put through more travails in the pursuit of true love than anyone we can think of in Miss Austen’s novels. After all of that, we would just wish for her a partner who trod just a little more lightly and humorously upon the earth.

Camilla is the protagonist in Madeleine L’Engle’s coming-of-age 1951 novel, “Camilla Dickinson”. Camilla is a 15 year old girl living with her family in New York, shortly after the close of World War II. She seems to have a charmed life, but things begin to change in a challenging way. Camilla’s mother, she discovers, is having an affair, a devastating discovery for the young girl. Camilla’s best friend, Luisa, ends their friendship when Camilla begins dating her brother. In an attempt to heal matters, Camilla’s parents decide to travel though Europe, putting Camilla in a Swiss boarding school. Bereft of family and friends at a crucial time in her life, Camilla displays a maturity beyond her years in dealing with her losses and coming to terms with the imperfections of parents, the vicissitudes of young friendships and the vagaries of life in general. One only wishes such a lovely child did not have to learn such truths so early.

Camilla is a central character in Donna Tartt’s 1992 first novel, “The Secret History”. She is twin to Charles and, with him, part of a close group of six students in an honors program in a small, elite New England college. One of the students is murdered. The impact of this event upon the others and their implication in it is the crux of the novel, and Camilla’s role is both intriguing and unsavory. The narrator, Richard, is in unrequited love with Camilla, whose attachment to her brother seems both natural and unnatural at the same time. Camilla is lovely, intelligent and mysterious, and we are as drawn to her as is Richard. At the same time, she is a manipulative, dangerous, aloof ice-maiden protected by the trappings of wealth and, although indisputably part of the single-minded group, Camilla almost manages to wreak more havoc by herself than they do collectively. Keeping with the Greek mythological themes of the novel, Camilla’s fate is tragic, as she retreats to her familial home in isolation, left to caring for her aging grandmother.