Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Fun book to read

I just finished reading it, and it was enjoyable. It is the story of a 17 yearold named Catherine Morland, who goes to Bath, then to the eponymous estate, in search of love and friendship. It is a satirical book, based in part on the novels of a popular writer at the time, Radcliffe, a writer of gothic romances.

In this way, it is Quixotic—remembering that Quixote, too, is satire of a popular genre, that of the knight errant. While the satire is perhaps not as mature as Cervantes’, it’s darn close enough. There are metafictional interjections by the author, which speak about ‘our heroine’; which comment on the differences between the way things are going for her and the way they ought to go, according to ‘the popular novels.’

The characters even are in on the joke. Catherine and her beau, Henry Tilney, joke about Henry’s father’s estate, Northanger Abbey, being the setting for one of Radcliffe’s novels, a spooky old cloister at which Catherine, come to visit a love interest, is confronted by mysteries… and horrors. This flirtatious dialogue comes right after the pair have discovered that they are both lovers of Radcliffe’s novels, especially Udolpho. This is funny and meta af. Props Austen.

Moreover, there is a long sequence in which Catherine suspects General Tilney, said father, the patriarch of the family, of having murdered his wife. This, throughout, is presented so fancifully that the reader can laugh along with the author’s joke. You can feel Austen riffing on the gothic genre, and it is impressive to feel her capable pen work.

Or take the character of John Thorpe, Catherine’s less fortunate suitor (he hasn’t read Udolpho, and doesn’t like novels) who is so well designed: we have a brash fool, always ready with a fresh set of contradictions, the perfect microcosm of the 19th century university bro.

It is a dang funny novel—but not without its moments of pathos. Indeed, there are deep truths spoken by the comic characters. It is Shakespearean, as well as Cervantesian. There are truly epic lines, worthy of either great writer. To wit, Henry and Catherine’s conversation, one morning at Northanger.

[Catherine]: “I have just learned to love a hyacinth.”

[Henry]: “And how might you learn? — By accident or argument?”

The former line even being iambic pentameter. I urge you to read the book to discover your own favourites.

So well wrought, and yet still showing signs of juvenile writing development, Northanger is the novelist’s novel, and Austen knows it. She throws us a bone:

“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, are eulogised 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.”

No fucking doubt, JA.