Beauty and Bias: Gendered Embodiment and Social Deformity in Sarah Harriet Burney’s Novels

This paper examines Sarah Harriet Burney’s exploration of physical appearance as a complex marker of ethical and social status within 18th-century aesthetic norms. Through her nuanced portrayals of beauty, deformity, and nonconformity, Burney critiques the linkage of physical traits to moral worth and societal inclusion, particularly in Country Neighbours. By contrasting characters such as the socially scrutinised Helen Tracy and the ungainly yet morally upright Lord Glenmorne, Burney reinterprets the Beauty and the Beast theme to 94 critique the gendered aesthetic ideals of her era. Specifically, she emphasises the selective scrutiny applied to women’s bodies, illustrating how men’s character often supersedes physical appearance. Unlike her sister Frances Burney, who subtly resists conflating virtue with beauty, Sarah Harriet Burney selectively employs physical descriptions to interrogate biases surrounding gender, race, and embodied social expectations. Contextualised within contemporary theories of aesthetics by Edmund Burke and William Gilpin, Burney’s characters engage in debates over “true beauty” as a quality of depth, emotion, and expression, rather than mere superficial allure. This paper argues that Burney’s narrative strategies redefine deformity and conformity as reflections of 18th-century gendered and racial biases, inviting a reexamination of the embodied social experience. By positioning both beauty and ugliness as constructs with ethical and social implications, Burney critiques the hierarchical conventions of appearance, ultimately revealing physical form as a contested and socially modulated aspect of virtue and humanity.