17/10/07 - English Literature - Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey

Lodge gives this statement about Jane Austen:

"I think I can say in all modesty I was the Jane Austen man. I wrote five books on Jane Austen, every one of which was trying to establish what her novels meant – and, naturally, to prove that no one had properly understood what they meant before … the aim was to be utterly exhaustive, to examine the novels from every conceivable angle – historical, biographical, rhetorical, mythical, structural, Freudian, Jungian, Marxist, existentialist, Christian, allegorical, ethical, phenomenological, archetypal, you name it. So that when each commentary was written, there would be nothing further to say about the novel in question."
[David Lodge, Small World, Secker and Warburg, 1984, p. 24]

Lodge explains that Austen was the writer of one of those novels that will always open up to further meanings. Northanger Abbey, particularly, is loaded with irony. It is slippery.

The novel was originally entitled Susan from 1798-99, and so it was at the time an eighteenth-century novel. The Gothic novel and the Novel of Sentiment belong to the eighteenth, as well as the nineteenth century, but became more concerned with revolution. There tends to be an atmosphere of being watched, with the fear of invasion permeating through the pages. Northanger Abbey was not published until 1817, so in the light of this information, it becomes a nineteenth-century novel. It was a posthumous publication that took twenty years to get into print. This is because Austen had sol the copyright of the novel to Crosby for £10, but bizarrely, he never published it, much to Austen's helpless disappointment. Perhaps Crosby did not recognise Austen as the prolific author of the new bestsellers Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, which had been published under the name, "of a lady". Austen did buy her book back again, but she felt that its irony was outdated and irrelevant by that time. She could not overlook this and see that the novel had universal application.

"That any bookseller should think it worth while to purchase what he did not think it worth while to publish seems extraordinary…. The public are entreated to bear in mind that thirteen years have passed since it was finished, many more since it was begun, and that during that period, places, manners, books, and opinions have undergone considerable changes."
[Jane Austen, Advertisement, by the Authoress, to Northanger Abbey]

When Austen began writing Northanger Abbey, the Gothic genre had enjoyed a long history already (with Walpole's Castle of Otranto commonly thought to be the first of the genre).

"…archaic settings, a prominent use of the supernatural, the presence of highly stereotyped characters and the attempt to deploy and perfect techniques of literary suspense."
[David Punter, The Literature of Terror, Longman, 1980, p.1]

In the eighteenth century the Gothic novel developed. Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho was one major influence on Austen's novel. In fact, knowing this novel enlightens many of the aspects and events in Northanger Abbey and we see Austen's clever use of irony. Udolpho is about a girl who lives in a domineering old building, owned by a domineering old man. Some of the scenes of Northanger Abbey are a direct re-enactment of the scenes of Udolpho. Take the following, for instance:

"It seemed to conceal a recess of the chamber; she wished, yet dreaded, to lift it, and to discover what it veiled: twice she was withheld by a recollection of the terrible spectacle her daring hand had formerly unveiled in an apartment of the castle, till, suddenly conjecturing, that it concealed the body of her murdered aunt, she seized it, in a fit of desperation, and drew it aside. Beyond, appeared a corpse, stretched on a kind of low couch, which was crimsoned with human blood, as was the floor beneath. The features, deformed by death, were ghastly and horrible, and more than one livid wound appeared in the face. Emily, bending over the body, gazed, for a moment, with an eager, frenzied eye; but, in the next, the lamp dropped from her hand, and she fell senseless at the foot of the couch."
[Anne Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Chapter 26]

"Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; and seizing, with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards to satisfy herself at least as to its contents. With difficulty, for something seemed to resist her efforts, she raised the lid a few inches; but at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room made her, starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with alarming violence. This ill–timed intruder was Miss Tilney’s maid, sent by her mistress to be of use to Miss Morland; and though Catherine immediately dismissed her, it recalled her to the sense of what she ought to be doing, and forced her, in spite of her anxious desire to penetrate this mystery, to proceed in her dressing without further delay. Her progress was not quick, for her thoughts and her eyes were still bent on the object so well calculated to interest and alarm; and though she dared not waste a moment upon a second attempt, she could not remain many paces from the chest. At length, however, having slipped one arm into her gown, her toilette seemed so nearly finished that the impatience of her curiosity might safely be indulged. One moment surely might be spared; and, so desperate should be the exertion of her strength, that, unless secured by supernatural means, the lid in one moment should be thrown back. With this spirit she sprang forward, and her confidence did not deceive her. Her resolute effort threw back the lid, and gave to her astonished eyes the view of a white cotton counterpane, properly folded, reposing at one end of the chest in undisputed possession!"
[Northanger Abbey II.vi]

There are similarities in the build of tension and suspense in both passages. But the revelations are of great dissimilarity: in Udolpho, the girl's worst fears are realised; but in Northanger Abbey Catherine finds the most mundane object, a blanket. Austen assumes that her reader is familiar with the Gothic genre, she plays on our expectation the something horrific will be found. But instead she is laughing at our disappointment. Austen wants us to recognise that Catherine is simply impressionable and that her mind has been perverted with unsuitable reading.

However, the irony runs deeper than this. Austen takes her influence also from the novel of sentiment, an established literary genre like the Gothic. It is thought to have originated from Samuel Johnson's Clarissa, but others say that it comes from The Man of Feeling, whose hero is affected by the selfishness of others in Britain and so is considered the epitomy of goodness and virtue. Novels of sentiment have their villains and their heroes, they have bad circumstances and a happy ending.

"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. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard - and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable independence besides two good livings - and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on - lived to have six children more - to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number; but the Morlands had little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features - so much for her person; and not less unpropiteous for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy's plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief - at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take. Such were her propensities - her abilities were quite as extraordinary. She never could learn or understand anything before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid."
[I.i]

Austen here offers irony and a critique of sentiment. We must consider that people in Austen's time did not yet think that the novel was an important literary form. Austen therefore defends the novel in her own novel.

"Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding - joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from The Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens - there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no novel-reader - I seldom look into novels - Do not imagine that I often read novels - It is really very well for a novel." Such is the common cant. "And what are you reading, Miss - ?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the 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."
[I. v]

Notice the post-modernist feel of the passage. It is a playful defence, not to be taken on face value. Austen raises the status of the novel, for her most socially adept characters, the Tilneys, are novel-readers themselves.

'"But you never read novels, I dare say?"
"Why not?"
"Because they are not clever enough for you - gentlemen read better books."
"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days - my hair standing on end the whole time."
"Yes," added Miss Tilney, "and I remember that you undertook to read it aloud to me, and that when I was called away for only five minutes to answer a note, instead of waiting for me, you took the volume into the Hermitage Walk, and I was obliged to stay till you had finished it."'
[I. xiv]

Austen therefore offers a critique on female education. Catherine has gained her education to some extent from novels, it is simply that she has not learnt to be a discerning reader. To Catherine, life is like a novel, and she is unable to read social situations or people. Irony gives us the method of interpretation for the novel and the world around us. It represents the divided self - multiplicity of perspective, that is, it moves away from a critique of only one character. Irony can help us unlock the truth of the whole, and develop our skills. So Northanger Abbey is a Bildungsroman.

Henry Tilney is a controversial figure in some ways. He assumes paternalistic authority, upsetting Catherine in order to make her conform. He is pedantic with her; he can be irritating. However, he is a character of irony. He offers Catherine the education she has lacked, teaching her to start thinking for herself rather than to take things on trust. He gives her critical powers. In a way, this makes him the hero of the novel.

'"But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?"
"The nicest - by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding."
"Henry," said Miss Tilney, "you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word `nicest,' as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way."
"I am sure," cried Catherine, "I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?""Very true," said Henry, "and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement - people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word."'
[I. xiv]

Henry employs Socratic dialogue to make Catherine think about how she processes events in her mind. He advises her to make up her own mind. There is a multiplicity of meaning.

At the end of the novel there is a gap between the appearance and the reality of Northanger Abbey. Austen knows that we want a happy ending, and she laughs at us for wanting it. She will not satisfy us; she leaves the end open. Interpretation of the novel rests on individual readers rather than on the author.