This month my library book club read
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I believe I last read it at university in my year-long course on Austen--in 1978! It is Jane's funniest novel.
Northanger Abbey was written with the title
Susan in 1798 and was sold to a publisher in 1803 for 10 pounds. The publisher put it aside...paper had become too expensive...and Jane tried in vain to get the manuscript returned. She wanted to update it. It was not published until 1817, after Jane's death, when Cassandra changed the title to
Northanger Abbey.
Jane knew the novel had become dated and wanted to rewrite it. So when it was finally published, it had become a story set in the past instead of a contemporary novel.
I laughed my way through the story. I was glad to hear another reader also laughed. I love Jane's wit and satire of social manners and parody of the popular Gothic novels.
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| 1807 illustration of a gentleman inviting a lady to dance |
Several readers felt the first volume was slow, and they hated Isabella's fawning over Catherine. But in the second volume, the readers found their interest piqued and sped through to the end.
"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her."--Northanger Abbey
Jane parodies the typical novels of her time by presenting Catherine Morland, a seventeen-year-old with nothing 'romantic' about her. She was a tomboy until fifteen and now is 'almost pretty.' She had never had a crush on a boy since she only met those she grew up with. Her father is a clergyman and her mother has birthed ten children. Jane throws Catherine into the exciting social mecca of Bath, hosted by a childless well-off couple, the Allens.
Catherine is truly an innocent abroad. She has never encountered prevarication, flattery, wits, rattles, and gold-diggers. She has no idea of what is socially acceptable for a young lady and the Allens fail to give her advice.
The first people Catherine and the Allens met are the Thorpe family. Isabella Thorpe grabs hold of Catherine, declaring her warmest friendship. Her brother John, a school friend of Catherine's brother James, endeavors to impress her with his equipage. He curses (d---d) and twice uses the anti-Semite remark "rich as a Jew." He brags and lies and has nothing redeeming about him. Catherine soon gets his number and wearies of him.
“Lord help you! You women are always thinking of men's being in liquor. Why, you do not suppose a man is overset by a bottle? I am sure of this—that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all." (John Thorpe)
“I cannot believe it." (Catherine Morland)
“Oh! Lord, it would be the saving of thousands. There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help." (John)
“And yet I have heard that there is a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford.” (Catherine)
“Oxford! There is no drinking at Oxford now, I assure you. Nobody drinks there. You would hardly meet with a man who goes beyond his four pints at the utmost. Now, for instance, it was reckoned a remarkable thing, at the last party in my rooms, that upon an average we cleared about five pints a head. It was looked upon as something out of the common way. Mine is famous good stuff, to be sure. You would not often meet with anything like it in Oxford—and that may account for it. But this will just give you a notion of the general rate of drinking there.” (John)
“Yes, it does give a notion,” said Catherine warmly, “and that is, that you all drink a great deal more wine than I thought you did.”
Isabella and Catherine are fans of the 'horrid' Gothic novels, especially Maria Radcliff's
Mysteries of Udolpho. John, on the other hand, is quite illiterate.
"Have you ever read Udolpho, Mr. Thorpe?”
“Udolpho! Oh, Lord! Not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do...Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t'other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.”
“I think you must like Udolpho, if you were to read it; it is so very interesting.”
“Not I, faith! No, if I read any, it shall be Mrs. Radcliffe's; her novels are amusing enough; they are worth reading; some fun and nature in them.”
“Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe,” said Catherine, with some hesitation, from the fear of mortifying him.
When James shows up, it becomes clear that Isabella is trying to engage James's affection while her brother is after Catherine. The Thorpes believe the Morlands are well off and will be the Allen's heirs.
Catherine meets a young man destined to be her romantic hero, in the form of Henry Tilney, a clergyman seven years her senior. He is hardly a 'romantic' hero, not quite handsome, a tease who likes to show his superiority of experience at Catherine's expense. He is a reader who esteems the novel.
Henry teases Catherine and teaches Catherine, who does not mind. Her naivety and transparent preference for him engages Henry's attention and he begins to consider her as a likely wife. Miss Tilney befriends Catherine, a sensible friend for her.
Isabella and John do everything they can to keep Catherine and Henry apart. Catherine is 'kidnapped' by the Thorpes for a carriage ride when she was to meet Henry and his sister for a walk. She entreats John to stop, to no avail.
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| Illustration by C.E. Brock. John 'kidnapping' Catherine |
Catherine makes her apologies by going to the Tilney's residence and rushing in, unannounced. It a childish and impetuous act. It also shows her native goodness and honesty and complete lack of pretentiousness.
Catherine is invited to spend several weeks with Henry and Miss Tilney at their family home, Northanger Abbey.
"She was to be their chosen visitor, she was to be for weeks under the same roof with the person whose society she mostly prized—and, in addition to all the rest, this roof was to be the roof of an abbey! Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney—and castles and abbeys made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill. To see and explore either the ramparts and keep of the one, or the cloisters of the other, had been for many weeks a darling wish, though to be more than the visitor of an hour had seemed too nearly impossible for desire."
On the journey to the Abbey, Henry fills Catherine's head with 'horrid' visions of the Abbey. Catherine is disappointed to find a modernized home instead of the Medieval ruins she had envisioned. Still, her she works herself into imaging horrid fantasies involving General Tilney and unawares reenacts a scene from Radcliffe's novel and is chastised by Henry for allowing her imagination to run wild.
"Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you."
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| Illustration by Hugh Thompson; Catherine runs into Henry while investigating the abbey |
The real horror is to come.
Mislead by John Thorpe into believing Catherine was a great heiress, General Tilney welcomes her into his home as a prospective daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, Isabella has managed to get engaged to James but discovers he has only a modest income. When the eldest Tilney son and heir flirts with Isabella she sets her cap to secure his affections. Her brother John informs General Tilney that the Morlands were not heirs to great wealth, and the General turns Catherine out. She is sent seventy miles to her home unaccompanied in a public carriage, a brutal and unfeeling slight. She could fall victim to any kind of evil--men abusing her, stealing from her, kidnapping her--
When Catherine arrives home unexpectedly, Mrs. Morland is nonplussed. She comments that Catherine was always such a scatterbrain, perhaps it did her good to have to take care of herself. Like the Allens, the Morlands are not very good parents.
Being an Austen novel, a wish-fulfillment ending brings Catherine her heart's desire.
During the time when Jane had sold her manuscript and was awaiting its publication, she lived in Bath where most of the action takes place. She was formed a deep friendship with her brother's governess, Anne Sharp, who was also an aspiring playwright. Read about their relationship in
A Secret Sisterhood by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney. To learn more about Jane's home in Bath read
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley. See illustrations from
Northanger Abbey editions at
Molland's Circulating Library. Read about how Austen has been interpreted in illustrations, stage, and screen in
The Making of Jane Austen by Devoney Looser.
*****
My son gave me Polite Society: The Jane Austen Board Game for Mother's Day!
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Polite Society Board Game against my quilt
Regency Redwork, inspired by Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen |
