With the publication of Evelina and Cecilia, women's novel-writing gained a higher level of critical esteem than it had ever attained before. The two works, separated only by four crowded years during which Burney also wrote and relinquished her first play, show how rapid was the development of the novelist's technique. From the epistolary narrative of Evelina, with its two strands of the heroine's experiences in contemporary society and her confrontation with a troubled family history, Burney moved to a flexible third-person narrative for the more ambitious Cecilia. Encompassing a wider social range than Evelina while unifying its gallery of satirical portraits under an overarching philosophical concern with the traditional philosophical 'choice of life' theme, Cecilia also managed, through the innovative use of free indirect discourse, to give a closer rendition than the earlier novel of its heroine's thoughts and feelings. Different though the two novels are, they share the same fundamental concerns. Both address the issue of what sort of place a young woman can take, what sort of power she may wield, within the patriarchally organised society of late eighteenth-century England. Evelina, wrongly denied the status of legitimate daughter, must be reunited with her father before she can fully take her place in society. Cecilia, inheriting from her uncle only on condition that her husband give up his family name for hers, finds that it would cost too much to remain an heiress. For both heroines the paternal name is at once a source of power and of difficulty.