Northanger Abbey is hilarious. It’s the story of a girl who wants to be the heroine of a Gothic novel, but who finds herself instead in a peaceful domestic novel. Throughout the book, the narrator addresses the reader directly in dry little asides. Catherine Morland is naive and foolish and very young, and while I can’t help laughing at her I also can’t help recognising my own young silly self in her—don’t we all secretly want to find ourselves in the books we’re reading? Or anyway, don’t we when we’re seventeen? Catherine is determind to think the best of everyone, unless they’re clearly a villain, capable of murdering their wife or shutting her up in an attic for years. She’s frequently mortified, but Austen deals gently with her, and she ends up in perfect felicity. This is not a book it’s possible to take entirely seriously, but it’s gentle and charming and exceedingly funny.
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.
That’s the beginning, and if you like this, you will like the rest of it, because it’s all like that.
The world seems to be divided into people who love Austen and people who have been put off her by the classic label. I had to read Pride and Prejudice in school and it put me off her for decades. I came to Austen in my thirties, largely because of the Georgian Legacy Festivals we used to have in Lancaster. I started reading Austen as background for what was actually an awesome combination of theatre, microtheatre, and live roleplaying. (Gosh those were fun. I miss them.) I think this was a good way to come at them, as light reading and for their time, because there’s nothing more offputting that books being marked worthy. Austen’s a ton of fun.
It’s very easy for us reading Austen to read it as costume drama and forget that this was reality when she was writing. It’s particularly easy for us as science fiction readers, because we’re used to reading constructed worlds, and Austen can easily feel like a particularly well done fantasy world. There’s also this thing that she was so incredibly influential that we see her in the shadow of her imitators—her innovations, like her costumes, look cosy because we’re looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope.
There’s also the temptation to complain because she chose to write within a very narrow frame of class—neither the high aristocracy nor the ordinary working people attracted her attention. She was interested in writing about the class to which she herself belonged, though she went outside it occasionally—the scenes in Portsmouth in Mansfield Park for instance. The thing it’s easy to miss here, again because of the telescope and the shadow effect, is that very few people had written novels set in this class before this. More than that, very few people had written domestic novels, novels of women’s concerns. Before Austen, there weren’t many novels set largely indoors.
It’s also easy for us to read her books as romance novels, forgetting that Austen was pretty much inventing the genre of romance novels as she went along, and by Emma she had pretty much got tired of doing them. If she’d lived longer she’d probably have invented more genres. I was going to joke that she’d have got to SF before retirement age, but seriously genre as such wasn’t what she was interested in. She was interested in ways of telling stories, ways that hadn’t been tried before.
You can see this quite clearly in Northanger Abbey, which was the first book she wrote, although because of a typical irritating publisher delay it wasn’t published until later. She’d written a number of early brief attempts at stories, but the first book length thing she completed was this cool funny examination of how reading influences your life. Catherine reads Gothics, which were immensely popular, and she wants to be in one and she persistently imagines that she is. Her imagination shapes the world into one kind of story, and the world pushes back with a different kind of story. She is a heroine, as are we all, just not the kind of heroine she thinks she is. Catherine doesn’t get a gothic hero, she gets the kind and teasing Henry Tilney, she doesn’t get a mysterious document bur rather a laundry list. What her reading shapes isn’t the world but her own character.
And SPOILER when she does have the chance to be a Gothic heroine, when she is cast out penniless from the abbey, she copes with it in a practical and sensible manner and doesn’t even notice.
This isn’t my favourite Austen novel, that would be Persuasion where everyone is grown up. However, it’s a lovely book to re-read on a day when you have a cold and it’s snowing.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published two poetry collections and eight novels, most recently Lifelode. She has a ninth novel coming out in January, Among Others, and if you liked this post you will like it. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
I started reading Austen by way of Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell. That novel’s language was so wonderful I just had to have more, so I started reading Pride and Prejudice and ended up reading all of Austen’s novels.
That’s one good thing about pastiches or novels influenced by other authors – they sometimes make us read things we’d never had read otherwise. A series of novels about a detective in Tzarist Russia got me to read Crime and Punishment, and I actually enjoyed it!
my first exposure was when someone lent my wife a pride and prejudice dvd a couple of years ago … and now we’ve watched all the movies and read all the books and really enjoyed them. i was kind of hesitant at first – thinking they’d be mushy – but it wasn’t the case, and the characters are so well drawn … complex, interesting, and laugh out loud funny … there’s a lot of great insight into what makes them/us tick.
Jo – you are too funny. You keep hitting all my non-genre favorites (Austen and O’Brien in particular). Now you have me thinking about the common threads that tie them together.
But if you start blogging Carl Hiassen’s hilarious south Florida crime novels (my favorite is Skinny Dip – about a husband who tosses his wife overboard on a cruise, forgetting how strong a swimmer she was in college, and having her come back and start playing mind games with him) or Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books, or David Sedaris nonfiction works, I’ll know you’ve somehow accessed my computer. Rob
This review is timely because I just finished reading Northhanger Abbey. This was the first time I ever read any Austen. Previoysly my only exposure to Austen was through the movies, otherwise I had succeded in avaoding them. My wife has read all of them and loved the movies and made me read this one. It was a rather good read.
Northhanger has always been one of my favorites, but most other Austen readers I know refer to it as her worst, and I’m never sure why. I think it requires a certain amount of knowledge about the gothic romances Catherine is always reading, or maybe it’s just that she is, as you say, very silly, as opposed to many of Austen’s other heroines, who are very clever. But with that in mind, I feel as though the narrator’s tone is such pure Austen, and it’s a book everyone should try out.
I read a fair amount of Austen in my teen years & then in college while studying English Lit, but I only read Northhanger a couple years ago. Knowing what she was spoofing made the experience hilarious. It’s not her most polished work, but it’s one of her most fun ones.
Thank you, Jo, for your continuing insights into my favorite authors, not only sf but recently including Patrick O’Brian and now Jane Austin. Austin has such a clear-eyed perception of people that she hardly seems dated, and like you I have also been puzzled that more people don’t see that she was inventing a whole new literature that only seems familiar or formulaic in hindsight.
The spoof of the gothic — one type of sf/fantasy — in Northanger Abbey makes it especially appropriate to consider here on Tor.com. But I am interested to hear that Persuasion is your favorite. Persuasion is almost my favorite, too, only very slightly behind Pride & Prejudice. I’ve written in the comments on the O”Brian posts that his books seems like books Austin could have written had she been able to go to sea with the Navy as most of her brothers did. After you finish the O’Brian books, would you consider giving us your take on the “naval officers ashore” in Persuasion?
How embarrassing. “Austen,” not “Austin,” of course.
I also came to Austen late because of being told in high school that Pride and Prejudice was very serious literature and I had to take it seriously and not laugh at all, and being bored out of my skull by it.
When I came back to it after watching a lot of Monty Python, I realized it’s supposed to be funny. The sense of humor comes from the same place. Why does no one tell students that Austen is funny?
Persuasion is also my favorite. I thought the recent spate of Austen + supernatural mashups would implode recursively if someone tried to do a supernatural version of Northanger Abbey…
I read Northanger Abbey a couple of years ago, after having read not only Pride and Prejudice and Emma (and there’s definitely something to be said for discovering Austen in one’s 30’s) but also The Castle of Otranto (the ur-Gothic novel), so I was kind of primed to get into this one. As funny as the genre-subversion was, for me the most striking scene was the one with the young man trying to impress Catherine by bragging about the speed of his carriage, and though Catherine suffers through it politely it’s clear she could not be less interested. It never occurred to me that such dialogues might have taken place before the invention of the internal combustion engine. Guess there’s nothing new under the sun, at least when it comes to human foibles.
Persuasion, eh? Thanks for the suggestion, and I’m moving it higher on my “must-read” list right away!
Speaking of Austen, which is least palatable– making a sequel such as “Mr. Darcy’s Tale,” changing the plot as in “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” or changing the setting as in “Pride and Prejudice on Mars”?
n.b. I have a vested interest in the answer.
DavidA: Calamity Jane Austin was the adventurous heroine who founded Texas while writing novels in her spare time.
Charles: I’d love “Pride and Prejudice on Mars.” See “Clueless” (“Emma at Beverly Hills High”). Austen sequels have no interest for me, and I have even less interest in mash-ups like “Zombies.” (That may be partly because I find zombies boring, although I seem to be alone.)
Jo: Well played. I’d really like to see what Calamity Jane wrote in that alternate universe
DavidA: You can find out! See, for example,
http://home.tiac.net/~cri/2001/austinbib.html
(Google wants to correct Austin to Austen, but don’t let it)
(Catherine Morland is) very silly, as opposed to many of Austen’s other heroines, who are very clever.
Emma Woodhouse is very clever and very silly. The recent production starring Romola Garai showed that up fairly well.
I’ve always thought FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM to be (among other things) Eco’s (very masculine) riposte to NORTHANGER ABBEY.
DavidaA: Can I hold you to that? If you google “Pride and Prejudice on Mars” (with quotes to avoid the zombies) you’ll see that you can buy it for a kindle.
But I won’t hold you to it. That ebook came from asking myself the question: is the story universal, and will it work anywhere? Answer: Yes it is, and I think it does. Others may disagree.
(Next up: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Asteroid. Manuscript: 2/3rds done.)
I first met Jane Austen in a college lit class, and was dreading Pride & Prejudice because those good students who read ahead were coming in asking lots of questions and generally being puzzled by everything. Finally I forced myself to pick it up the day before we were to start discussing it in class. I had the fun of coming in and nearly blowing the professor’s mind by telling him that I’d never enjoyed my homework so much in my life. :) You should have seen his face – he lit up like a thousand watts. Finally, a student who actually understood the book – and the humor – without having everything explained in excruciating detail! (I think I was the only one in that class, anyway, though there have to have been more in his career.)
I actually attribute that enjoyment to Austen’s imitators – or rather, one of them: Georgette Heyer. By having read all her regency romances in my teens, I understood the language and much of the social convention of the late 18th century. Since that barrier to comprehension was missing, I was free to enjoy Austen’s characterizations, plots, snarky comments and all without missing a beat, and I’ve been a huge Austen fan ever since.
I think Northanger Abbey is probably my least favorite of hers, which still means it’s way ahead of many other books on my “good stuff” list. As Jo says, it’s more fun in terms of laughing at her, and at how much I used to be like her, than anything. I’m not a big Gothic novel fan, but the spoof is great fun. My favorites alternate between Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Pride & Prejudice, each of which I enjoy immensely for very different reasons.
Still and all, Northanger Abbey is hilarious – especially if, as Rob T. says @10, you’ve just read The Castle of Otranto.
Oh, and for Carrie_Vaughn @9 – that’s almost criminal, telling a kid that “Pride and Prejudice was very serious literature and I had to take it seriously and not laugh at all.” That’s truly awful. Of course you’re supposed to laugh! What were they thinking?? Well, I’m glad you were able to come back to it later and enjoy the humor as it should be.
Heyer for the win! And I’m going to have to read Northanger Abbey again.
Nobody ever told me I have to read these. That is probably why I have enjoyed them so much.
The Castle of Otranto, You say? Hmm…
I have a weird problem with Austen–every time I try to read her, I get hopelessly bogged down, not because I dislike her writing, but just the opposite–every single sentence is so perfect that I can’t just forge ahead throught the book. I get stuck pondering the beauty of the opening paragraphs, and get nowhere. Evidently, I need more self discipline . . .
Persuasion is my favourite Austen novel as well. I just really like the character, and love seeing her cope with these really hard situations, really emotionally harrowing – and being humourous and tough and kind. And at the same time she is gentle and open and sensitive. She has got such class. So when that marvelous character of hers is rewarded eventually, I enjoy it so much! Austen is such a good painter of character.
reaeverywhereelse: Oh, no! That was my idea, mine. I am seriously put out.
Ah well. Back to your regularly scheduled appreciation of Jane Austen.
O. M. G. I am so utterly pleased to see this article. Northanger Abbey is my all-time fave Austen. Though I’ve read Pride and Prejudice more (and have the 2005 and 1996 versions practically memorized at this point), Northanger holds the greatest portion of my heart. Not since Austen’s Juvenalia have I laughed so much at Georgian/Regency fiction. My only wish is that she had fleshed out Eleanor’s relationship; there could’ve been a great Bingley/Jane romance there and yet it gets waylaid.
Catherine Morland is the sweetest heroine, and Henry Tilney will always beat out Darcy for me. Who wants Sulky McGee when you could have a charming, handsome, down to earth, clever, witty, funny, honest man like Henry?
The BBC version that came out a few years ago (2008?) is completely adorable, though they do miss a lot by making it only 90 minutes.
Reaeverywhereelse: I sometimes have a problem with writing being too beautiful and wanting to hug it and love it and call it George but not wanting to actually, you know, go on to the next sentence and follow the story. Austen isn’t like that for me, but Patricia McKillip is practically unreadable with beauty. I call this the poetry coming between me and the story — I want to read fast and be in the story. I read poetry differently. It’s an interesting thing, and I’m glad I’m not the only one.
See, to me, NORTHANGER ABBEY may not be science fiction, but it’s about science fiction fans. It’s entirely a geek romance, among fen. Gothic novel fen, rather than science fiction and/or fantasy fen, but still, recognizably fen. The characters in NORTHANGER ABBEY are so totally, y’know, US.
Catherine Moorland would be a regular poster on tor.com if she was in a contemporary setting.
Ian: That’s a lovely insight. The related thought is that it’s actually a revolutionary anti-genre novel — in a world where everything was a gothic with monsters it’s Northanger Abbey and Nothing.
Yay! I love Northanger Abbey! it’s totally underappreciated! thanks for writing about it
Northanger Abbey was the first Austen book I read, for a middle-school english class, and at the time I thought Catherine was incredibly silly. I still think she’s incredibly silly, but I’m kind of fond of her.
I have a weakness for Mansfield Park (although not the appallingly bad movie they “made” out of it). It’s not her best book, but I really enjoy the way she wrote the book her critics wanted her to write, where the heroine was unexceptional, mealy-mouthed, timid and righteous (although Austen suggests she would have been willing to give up her objections to a loveless marriage with a man whose principles she disapproved of for the sake of material comfort if he’d been just a tiny bit more patient), and the women of spirit who were concerned with status and money were fallen jades who came to a bad end.
I read it as a brilliantly restrained broadside against people who didn’t approve of Elisabeth Bennett, and one she rebounded from by writing Emma Woodhouse the next year. Funny it was her least popular book.
I think Persuasion is too painful, since Austen never got back the man she loved and lost through a mercenary older friends’ interference (in this case, his aunt). It did make the best Austen movie, though.
I have Northanger on audiobook, it’s so funny and if I’m listening alone in the car only random passing drivers see me laughing like an idiot. I never “had to” read Austen, and coming to her after Dickens, I always found her stories clever and funny. Granted I started classics when I was a kid, so I didn’t have all the later authors cluttering my impressions.
I agree entirely, except that she was inventing the romance novel. That cuts out Eliza Haywood’s long career, and pioneer romance writers like Mary Davys. I also think she was influenced heavily by Evelina, which combines humor with romance, but from there she went to RE-invent the form, making fun of the by-now worn tropes. (She gets overtly wicked with this in Lady Susan.)
Northanger Abbey was the first Austen novel I ever read. A canny English teacher assigned it to us along with Jane Eyre when I was a freshman in high school. We ate it up and got the joke completely. A few years later I actually read the Mysteries of Udolpho to see how “horrid” they were. Pretty darned horrid, actually!
I will never understand Janeites who hate this book. I think it has much more life and verve than Emma, which I find intensely annoying. Perhaps it’s because this book is just TOO down-to-earth for them, or because they’ve never had the experience of trying to read the “laundry list” scene aloud and being to convulsed with laughter to get the sentences out.
Sigh. Some people are NO fun at all.
now i have to reread this. i confess to being one of the people who liked this book the least of all of austen’s books, but perhaps now that i have a better idea what to expect, i’ll enjoy it more.
thanks for the review–i do enjoy reading your rereads so much!
Was that really a cover of this book? Imagine the poor readers seduced by it!
Mantelli @33 – Not speaking as one who “hates” this book, but… as I said above, it’s my least favorite of her books. Primarily, I just don’t particularly enjoy Gothic, and she did such a good job of the Gothic spoof that the eye-rolling melodrama is more eye-roll-inducing than laugh-inducing. It doesn’t mean I have no sense of humor, it just means that mine is different than yours. I will, however, concede that trying to read it out loud with a straight face would be… difficult.
Jo@28 I don’t know that it’s exactly revolutionarily anti-Gothic – I think the Mysteries of Udolpho itself was knocking back at the ghosts-and-superstition part of the genre, and Northanger Abbey ‘just’ took it a step further and abolished kidnappings and murders as well. Also it eschewed endless descriptions of scenery and recitations of poems; Mysteries could stand to be abridged somewhat, I tell you.
We read Northanger Abbey in my college Victorian history & lit class, immediately after reading Uncle Silas. Set side-by-side like that, Northanger Abbey‘s brilliance shines even shinier.
Northanger Abbey is my wife’s least favorite Austen novel. Our relationship almost didn’t survive the revelation.
Northanger Abbey saved my bacon on the AP English test. The question was about a humorous piece of writing, and my teacher had anticipated that; her choice was Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead, which I didn’t understand or remember well enought to write about.
I’ve like Austen since I was 12, and I don’t see her as a romance novelist. She’s too sharp, and marriage is deadly serious business, which it isn’t, really in novels like Heyer’s.
And I agree with you, Jo, that it can be like a fantasy; the setting of Lifelode is as different from my life as the setting of Northanger Abbey.
Thanks for this post, Jo. My embarrassment squick and I bounced very hard off Catherine’s first faux pas when I was a teenager, and I put it down unfinished. Even though I’ve memorized most of Austen’s other books, I’d never been brave enough to try again. I just finished reading the whole thing for the first time ever, and I giggled the whole way through.