Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

Jane Austen is a favorite of mine—I can’t count the amount of times I’ve read Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion in particular. But I read an article recently on one of her books that I read once and didn’t pick up again—Northanger Abbey. (The article is called “In Praise of Jane Austen’s Least Beloved Novel” and it’s by Adelle Waldman, for the New Yorker.)

It sparked some interest in me partly because of the explanation of why most people don’t love Northanger Abbey like they do Pride and Prejudice—the narrator stands outside the heroine. We’re not there, with Catherine, feeling what she's feeling, we're standing aloof from her, observing her emotions. It makes her harder to relate to.

The other interesting thing was the statement that Northanger Abbey is a “novel about novels.” I love novels, and outside of reading them, I like talking about them, so that sounded exactly like the kind of thing I want to read.

The first half of the book, Austen consistently draws your attention to the tropes of the sensationalist novels of the time. She points out that Catherine is unlike the heroines in these novels, not a genius, not blindingly beautiful, not particularly sensational in any way as a heroine ought to be. She’s just a normal, sweet, naïve country girl, daughter to some well-meaning but clueless parents who send her to Bath with friends.  

In Bath Catherine meets the Thorpe family: Isabella Thorpe, a girl about her own age who becomes Catherine’s bosom friend instantly, and Isabella’s boorish brother John. They also meet a Mr. Henry Tilney whose company Catherine finds very enjoyable. Together, Catherine and Tilney have several conversations about the merits of novel reading—and despite Austen’s obvious poking fun at the over dramatic sensationalist fluff that Cathrine prefers, all her comments about novel are not negative. (Well of course they weren’t; Jane Austen couldn’t be a hypocrite, after all.) She also meets Mr. Tilney’s sister Elanor, and his father, General Tilney. She is pleased and flattered when the old man makes quite a fuss about her and seems to hold her in high regard; why he might single her out, she has no idea.

When Catherine’s relationship with the Tilney siblings has developed for a while, they offer for her to come and stay with Elanor at the family home, Northanger Abbey. She accepts, with her parents’ and guardians’ permission, and off they go to Northanger Abbey. At this point, Catherine’s fluffy reading material, the romantic thrill of staying at a real Abbey, and her own naivete combine to make some unpleasant consequences for her.

Once in his home, she begins to understand that despite General Tilney’s professed fondness for her, he is not quite the shining example of fatherhood she assumed him to be. His children find him oppressive, and he frequently says one thing and expects another to be understood.

Inspired by gothic horror, Catherine imagines that Henry Tilney’s father locked up his now deceased wife in a dungeon and persecuted her till she died. She allows her macabre suspicions to influence her behavior until Henry finds her poking around where she shouldn’t be, and her embarrassing assumptions are revealed.

Mortified that her crush knows her vain speculations about his family, she takes a step closer to adulthood and realizes that she should not let her fluffy novels guide her ideas about people. But then the novel takes a turn, as General Tilney’s actual character reveals itself. He is not the villain of a gothic novel, but that does not mean he isn’t subject to less dramatic failings. After traveling back to Bath on business, he returns to the Abbey and in a fit of unexplained pique, he sends Catherine home without advance warning, money for fare, or a civil word. Completely shocked, as she has no idea what she has done, Catherine returns home as ordered, depressed, and missing Mr. Tilney.

It's not until Henry appears at her home that the full story comes out. General Tilney had been misinformed and thought that Catherine was an heiress. Though he was perfectly well off himself, he liked the idea that he might get a daughter-in-law with a fortune, and was encouraging Henry to court her. When he discovered he’d been misinformed of her wealth, he took out his injured pride on Catherine, though she was entirely innocent of any deceit. Fortunately for Catherine, even in the face of his father’s displeasure, Henry still wants to marry her, and with some time and softening from the old general, they get married.

I do like the turn of the novel—the young, naïve girl making wild assumptions about someone based on her sensationalist reading materiel, only to discover that while a civilized, Christian British man is not likely to imprison his wife till she dies of despair, there are other, more realistic faults of character he is quite likely to fall into—vanity, selfishness, and spitefulness.

As far as the story structure goes, Northanger Abbey is everything Austen always is—incisive, insightful, and clever. As far as enjoyable reading material though…it lacks.  

Partly it’s uncomfortable because I was a naïve teenage girl at one point—though I know I had better taste in novels and I hope I had a little bit better head on my shoulders. I spent most of the novel cringing at Catherine’s wide-eyed innocent mistakes, her blindness to people’s real characters by their false professions of affection or regard, her histrionic sense of imagination, her unconsciously obvious crush on Henry Tilney, her failure to stand up to more forceful personalities—all failings of the young that bring back my own teenage immaturities too clearly! That’s entirely deliberate on Austen’s part; she intends for you to see the foolishness going on while Catherine is oblivious. Catherine does show inclination to learn from her mistakes too, which is hopeful…but it doesn’t make it an easier read.

And then we come to Henry Tilney. He is by far the wittiest and most mischievous of Austen’s heroes. I remember being charmed by him when I first read the book, and wishing he wasn’t out of the scenes so often.

Coming back to it with some age and knowledge of what actually makes a good marriage, I’m not nearly so impressed. He basically likes her because he finds it flattering that she likes him and is too innocent to conceal it. He’s quick and bright and funny and he’s constantly running rings around her in their conversations, and she has no idea.

For a young man engaged in the exiting business of finding a wife that kind of dependence would certainly be flattering, but in a few decades, if she does not seriously add to her natural sweetness some common sense and practical knowledge of human nature, he will end up not much better than Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice; forever chained to a silly wom

an, taking refuge in contempt and sarcasm. But maybe she will improve. I have hopes for this imaginary couple written into existence centuries ago!

Northanger Abbey is an excellent book. Not, perhaps, always an enjoyable one, but that is one of Ms, Austen’s points: novels are valuable and instructive insomuch as they reveal the truth of the human condition. And by that measurement, it excels.