Source of book: I own this
It has been quite a long time since I have read any Jane Austen. I kept intending to go back and read more, but time slipped away.
Back in the day (before the blog), I read Pride and Prejudice and Emma. My birth family was very much into the delightful A&E series of P&P, with Colin Firth, Jennifer Ehle, and the rest, and spent the last of my years living at home breaking out quotes at opportune times. My wife likewise loves the series, so we have continued that tradition.
I feel like I read Sense and Sensibility back then too, and I know I watched the Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman film.
In any case, I decided to go with one of the other Austen books, outside of the big three.
Northanger Abbey was, along with Persuasion, published after Austen’s death. However, it is believed to be the first novel she completed.
This makes sense, as the book has a bit of a juvenile feel to it. While there are glimpses of the wit to come, and the book definitely has some great moments, it is uneven. The dialogue feels forced at times, the plot seems a bit thin, the central tension and misunderstanding a bit unconvincing. This is not to say it is a bad book. It isn’t. But it isn’t the masterpiece of Austen’s later writing.
The idea behind the book is good, and is explored with humor. Young Catherine Morland, all of age seventeen, has spent her youth reading lurid gothic novels - particularly those by Ann Radcliffe - The Mysteries of Udolpho is mentioned multiple times.
With these sensational and shocking plots in her head, Catherine is all too quick to imagine horrible things about the people she knows. Did he kill is wife? Is there a body or a lunatic in the attic? Has he seduced and abandoned a girl in the past?
This collides, naturally, with real life, in hilarious and mortifying fashion.
The book starts off with Catherine vacationing in Bath with her wealthy neighbors, the Allens. Although bored at first, before meeting two people. Isabella Thorpe becomes her friend - and interested in Catherine’s older brother John. She also meets Henry Tilney, a dashing young gentleman, who seems to return her interest.
Will Catherine get Henry? Or will a combination of her low income, wild imagination, and naivety ruin her happiness?
As I mentioned, there are early signs of the brilliant Austen wit in this book. I jotted down a bunch of quotes. Here are my favorites, starting with this exchange between Henry and Catherine at their first meeting.
“I have hitherto been very remiss, madam, in the proper attentions of a partner here; I have not asked you how long you have been in Bath, whether you were ever here before, whether you have been at the Upper Rooms, the theatre, and the concert, and how you like the place altogether. I have been very negligent; but are you now at leisure to satisfy me in this particulars? If you are, I will begin directly.”
“You need not give yourself that trouble, sir.”
“No trouble, I assure you, madam.” Then, forming his features into a set smile, and affectly softening his voice, he added, with a simpering air. “Have you been long in Bath, madam?”
“About a week, sir,” replied Catherine, trying not to laugh.
The rapier-sharp observation is on display as well.
Allen immediately recognized the features of a former schoolfellow and intimate, who she had seen only once since their respective marriages, and that many years ago. Their joy on this meeting was very great, as well as it might be, since they had been contented to know nothing of each other for the last fifteen years.
That’s definitely a classic Austen line. Here is another that I loved. A truly pithy observation, and one that has aged very well indeed.
It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire; how little it is biased by the texture of their muslin, and how unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged, the mull, or the jackonet. Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire here the more, no woman will like her the better for it.
Another comment on gender relations in culture comes in a conversation about both marriage and dancing.
“You will allow that in both man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty each to endeavour to give no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbors, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else.”
Later there is another pithy observation.
“No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.”
Isabella Thorpe’s brother is interested in Catherine, but he is such a boor that she finds him beyond tedious. In the world of Austen, the highest form of revenge is a cutting comment.
“Thank ye,” cried Thorpe; “but I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about and look like a fool. No, if you do not go, d--- me if I do. I only go for the sake of driving you.”
“That is a compliment which gives me no pleasure.”
On another occasion, when Isabella confides that Thorpe is interested in Catherine, she responds with this:
“I would not speak disrespectfully of a brother of yours, Isabella, I am sure, but you know very well that if I could think of one man more than another, he is not the person.”
On the other hand, the repartee between Catherine and Henry Tilney is all about a different kind of barb. In this example, the subject of lurid novels comes up.
“I am very glad to hear it; indeed; and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.”
“It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do, for they read nearly as many as women.”
And later in the conversation:
“That is, I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?”
“Yes, I am fond of history.”
“I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men are all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all, it is very tiresome; and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths, their thoughts and designs; the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books.”
That’s gold right there.
It isn’t that often that I have to actually look up a word. I did in this one, however. “Se’nnight” is a new one for me. It isn’t as common as “fortnight” - aka fourteen nights, aka two weeks. Se’nnight is seven nights, or a week.
The book takes an interesting turn about halfway through, when the scene changes for the parties and dances of Bath to the gloomy and atmospheric mansion of the Tilney family: Northanger Abbey. There, Catherine’s love for novels turns against her. Henry teases her, perhaps not knowing how close to the bone he is.
“Will not your mind misgive you, when you find yourself in this gloomy chamber, too lofty and extensive for you, with only the feeble rays of a single lamp to take in its size, its walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as large as life, and the bed of dark green stuff or purple velvet, presenting even a funereal appearance. Will not your heart sink within you?”
He goes on a bit, until finally she protests.
“Oh! Mr. Tilney, how frightful! This is just like a book! But it cannot really happen to me.”
But of course it does. Catherine imagines a whole backstory wherein Henry’s father killed his mother and is haunted by it ever after. Finally, Henry realizes what her imagination has wrought, and she is mortified.
“If I understand your rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to - Dear Miss Moreland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicious you have entertained.”
He reminds her that the reality of 19th Century England is hardly that of novels, with lurid secrets lurking in every attic. Poor Catherine, her fantasies die hard.
Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and charming even as were the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the midland counties of England was to be looked for. Of the Alps and Pyrenees, with their pine forests and their vices, they might give a faithful delineation; and Italy, Switzerland, and the South of France, might be as fruitful in horrors as they were there represented. Catherine dared not doubt beyond her own country, and even of that, if hard pressed, would have yielded the northern and western extremities.
The book does have one of the finest ending lines of any book.
To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself, moreover, convinced that the General’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward filial disobedience.
Northanger Abbey was a pleasure to read. It may not be up there with Austen’s best, but it has some good moments for sure.
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