Customer Reviews

Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon (The World's Classics)

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I read this novel several years ago in a college seminar on Jane Austen, but I did not remember it well at all and always wanted to reread it. I recently read Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and figured this would be the perfect time to reread what is renowned as the most spot-on parody of the Gothic genre, specifically Radcliffe's version of that genre. Yes, Austen's novel pokes fun at female readers who let their imaginations get the best of them while reading texts like Udolpho. Upon arriving at the Abbey, Catherine Morland cannot sleep because she is convinced she will dig up some dark Tilney family secret by opening suspicious-looking chests and drawers in her chamber; she ends up admonishing herself for her gullibility and overactive imagination. One of the funniest scenes in the novel occurs when Henry and Catherine are driving together to the Abbey and he describes for her the perfect Gothic scenario: Catherine will be placed in a portion of the Abbey far away from the other inhabitants and will be assaulted by all varieties of Radcliffean tactics. Catherine seems engrossed by Tilney's humorous narrative and even though she is supposedly frightened by what she is hearing, she always goads Tilney to keep going. Here, of course, Austen is able to mock the insatiable appetite of female readers for Gothic and other sorts of novels, the kind of appetite that other writers (Wollstonecraft, for instance) had also cautioned against. There is no doubt that Northanger Abbey, while perhaps less developed than her other major novels, showcases the talent for irony and humorously-conveyed observations of human behavior and social interaction that we see in all of Austen's novels. However, I can't quite agree that Northanger Abbey is strictly a parody or a send-up of Gothic literature or of novels more generally.
This novel certainly traces the development of its anti-heroine, Catherine, from a susceptible, overly-sensitive reader of fiction to a more mature, some might say disillusioned, and savvier reader of people and their motives. This development is primarily shown by Austen in her treatment of Catherine's relationship with Isabella Thorpe. Early in the novel, Catherine is not equipped to detect Isabella's hypocrisy and inconstancy. By the end, however, when Isabella hopes to retain Catherine's friendship, Catherine is able to see through the ambitious, wannabe social climber and refuses to continue any correspondence with Isabella. This marks a definite evolution in Catherine's character, one that most readers see as instructive on Austen's part. The lesson: once an individual (a woman) becomes more discerning in her literary tastes, she will become more discerning in other, more important realms of "real life." What is interesting to me here is that Austen's description of Catherine and her coming-of-age actually has a lot in common with Radcliffe's evolving portrait of Emily St. Aubert in The Mysteries of Udolpho. Both heroines are overly-excitable and prone to investigating mysterious noises and falling prey to false dangers (some of Emily's are real, of course, but as Radcliffe explains all of the seemingly-supernatural elements, Emily only had the real villainy of Montoni and Madame Cheron to fear). Part of Austen's project, though, is to show us that Emily is a heroine, but Catherine is not a heroine; therefore, Catherine is not Emily, and for Austen, that makes all the difference. However, this simple formulation ignores the fact that Radcliffe's heroine also evolves, in a way very similar to Catherine. Emily also works to put into practice the advice of a man (her father), who has warned her to never allow herself to be ruled by her passions, but instead to teach herself to be governed by reason. That said, as a point of difference, I sense more sadness in the evolved character of Catherine, as though growing up is a more painful process in Austen's world, despite the fact that Emily, in true heroine fashion, undergoes much more traumatic experiences on her way to mature womanhood.
One consideration that makes it difficult to classify Northanger Abbey as a parody of Gothic literature and its effects is Austen's depiction of the male characters. It is especially useful to compare her portrayal of Henry Tilney and that of John Thorpe. Even Catherine recognizes early on that Tilney is a worthy suitor and Thorpe is an arrogant, oblivious buffoon. Surely it is important that Thorpe is the character who "never read[s] novels" because he has "something else to do." It is Thorpe, a character who Austen ridicules consistently, who states that "Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff." Tilney, on the other hand, has read Udolpho and other novel, though Catherine broaches the topic with him assuming that "they are not clever enough" and "gentlemen read better books," as a result of her earlier conversation with Thorpe. In fact, Tilney purports to have torn through the novel in only two days, having taking his sister's copy and not being able to put the book down once he began. The conversation between Tilney and Catherine about novels, then, is another example of Catherine's inability to read other people completely accurately, but it doesn't seem to be an example of Austen's dismissal of Gothic literature or novels. It's tempting to assume that Austen would agree with Tilney's assessment: "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." Sure, Austen's novel ridicules those who cannot separate fiction from reality, but it does not warn all readers (women) against Gothic or other fictional forms.
Further support for this last conclusion occurs in the long paragraph that closes Chapter V of Volume I. After describing a hypothetical scenario in which a young woman downplays the importance of the novel she is currently reading by saying "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda," the heroines of some popular novels of the late eighteenth century, Austen's narrator writes, "in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language." This statement, followed by the narrator's comparison of the pride the same young woman would have displayed on announcing that she was reading the Spectator instead of a novel, suggest that Austen is not exactly making fun of women who read novels, but rather is poking fun at the social perception of novels as silly and worthless.
We can't really say exactly what Austen intended in Northanger Abbey, and I am surely imposing twentieth-century feminist thought onto a work produced centuries prior, but it seems to me that Austen is critiquing the limited opportunities for young women in the early nineteenth century more so than she is critiquing the women themselves. Ultimately, Catherine, with the exception of her social outings in Bath, spends most of her time in a variety of homes. Even when there are social outings, female behavior is definitely regimented. The overactive imagination of Austen's (anti-) heroine is not so much a result of her novel reading as it is of the limits put on her by her gender.