Book Review: Northanger Abbey
Aug. 19th, 2022 07:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerThe new Persuasion movie has had one good effect, at least: watching it made me decide that it’s time to begin my long-planned Jane Austen reread. Which means Northanger Abbey, and a chance to revisit my beloved Catherine Morland!
Northanger Abbey is both Austen’s first and last novel: it was accepted for publication in 1803, but the publisher sat on it so long that Austen eventually bought the rights back, and then the novel was published posthumously with Persuasion in 1818. After getting the rights back, Austen revised the first half of the novel (or so I recall from that useful source “I think I read this somewhere,” although Wikipedia is not backing me up), which may account for the fact that the book is somewhat lopsided.
The first half is a brilliant, incisive tour de force as naive young Catherine Morland visits Bath with her kindly neighbors and discovers, astonished, that what people say is not always what they mean.
I was about Catherine’s age the first time I read this book, and enjoyed it in part because I could feel affectionately superior to Catherine’s naivete. (As Austen comments, “Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.”) Rereading it now, I must acknowledge that on my first read I was probably about as naive as Catherine (although perhaps a little better supplied with general knowledge), not only in my own life but as a reader. For instance, it’s only on this reread that I grasped that Isabella Thorpe pursues Catherine as a friend at least in part as a stratagem to attach Catherine’s brother.
The first time around, Isabella didn’t make much impression on me, but upon reread, what an amazing foil she is for Catherine! What absolute comedy gold! The contrast between her professed disdain for young men and the keen interest betrayed by her actions is continually hilarious.
But she also struck me as a somewhat tragic figure this time around. She’s duplicitous because she can’t be open: it would be a gross breach of decorum to openly avow that she needs to marry for money. And yet that need is very real, and artful as she is, she’s not quite artful enough to land that marriage - at least within the confines of this book. As she’s described as a beautiful girl, I imagine she’ll manage it eventually.
It is perhaps in part the lack of Isabella that makes the second half of the book weaker than the first. It’s still entertaining, and the set-pieces sending up gothic tropes still make me laugh, but in comparison to the seemingly effortless first half, these scenes sometimes feel labored.
In particular, the book bobbles in the scene where Henry Tilney discovers that Catherine has been imagining that his father murdered his mother. The narrative strains to force a confession from Catherine’s lips, and once she’s confessed, Henry’s response is oddly muted and impersonal. He takes her to task for imagining such a thing could happen without becoming the gossip of the entire county, but he doesn’t seem the least personally offended on his father’s behalf.
But perhaps he feels that although Catherine is wrong about the facts, she’s hit on an important emotional truth about his father: he’s so demanding and persnickety that he squeezes the life out of everyone around him. Indeed, maybe the exchange brings him a sort of relief. Naive though Catherine is in some ways, she clearly knows just what kind of father-in-law she’d be getting if she married into the Tilney family, and that knowledge may help clear the way for Henry to propose.
Northanger Abbey is both Austen’s first and last novel: it was accepted for publication in 1803, but the publisher sat on it so long that Austen eventually bought the rights back, and then the novel was published posthumously with Persuasion in 1818. After getting the rights back, Austen revised the first half of the novel (or so I recall from that useful source “I think I read this somewhere,” although Wikipedia is not backing me up), which may account for the fact that the book is somewhat lopsided.
The first half is a brilliant, incisive tour de force as naive young Catherine Morland visits Bath with her kindly neighbors and discovers, astonished, that what people say is not always what they mean.
I was about Catherine’s age the first time I read this book, and enjoyed it in part because I could feel affectionately superior to Catherine’s naivete. (As Austen comments, “Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.”) Rereading it now, I must acknowledge that on my first read I was probably about as naive as Catherine (although perhaps a little better supplied with general knowledge), not only in my own life but as a reader. For instance, it’s only on this reread that I grasped that Isabella Thorpe pursues Catherine as a friend at least in part as a stratagem to attach Catherine’s brother.
The first time around, Isabella didn’t make much impression on me, but upon reread, what an amazing foil she is for Catherine! What absolute comedy gold! The contrast between her professed disdain for young men and the keen interest betrayed by her actions is continually hilarious.
But she also struck me as a somewhat tragic figure this time around. She’s duplicitous because she can’t be open: it would be a gross breach of decorum to openly avow that she needs to marry for money. And yet that need is very real, and artful as she is, she’s not quite artful enough to land that marriage - at least within the confines of this book. As she’s described as a beautiful girl, I imagine she’ll manage it eventually.
It is perhaps in part the lack of Isabella that makes the second half of the book weaker than the first. It’s still entertaining, and the set-pieces sending up gothic tropes still make me laugh, but in comparison to the seemingly effortless first half, these scenes sometimes feel labored.
In particular, the book bobbles in the scene where Henry Tilney discovers that Catherine has been imagining that his father murdered his mother. The narrative strains to force a confession from Catherine’s lips, and once she’s confessed, Henry’s response is oddly muted and impersonal. He takes her to task for imagining such a thing could happen without becoming the gossip of the entire county, but he doesn’t seem the least personally offended on his father’s behalf.
But perhaps he feels that although Catherine is wrong about the facts, she’s hit on an important emotional truth about his father: he’s so demanding and persnickety that he squeezes the life out of everyone around him. Indeed, maybe the exchange brings him a sort of relief. Naive though Catherine is in some ways, she clearly knows just what kind of father-in-law she’d be getting if she married into the Tilney family, and that knowledge may help clear the way for Henry to propose.
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Date: 2022-08-19 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-08-19 01:51 pm (UTC)Henry's dad doesn't have any skeletons in the closet - they're all out on display.
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Date: 2022-08-20 01:29 pm (UTC)And oh god it's so true re: General Tilney. Even when he tries to be affable, all his worst flaws are already on display. His poor children having to put up with it all the time!
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Date: 2022-08-19 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-20 01:37 pm (UTC)It's really too bad that Austen didn't have a chance to finish her revisions on this one. I'm sure she could have brought it together if she had more time.
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Date: 2022-08-19 11:33 pm (UTC)That's so interesting about your two different reads of the book--that younger-you felt certain she was superior to Catherine's naivete, whereas present-you feels otherwise. I haven't done much revisiting like that, and I wonder what things I'd realize if I did...
(I like that you make a happy ending for Isabella. I say this without having read the story, so I have no preconceived notions of Isabella, but I instantly felt worried and sad for her based on what you wrote--so I appreciate your reassurance that she'll be okay in the long run.
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Date: 2022-08-20 01:27 pm (UTC)I mean who knows really what will happen to Isabella, but she's described as a beautiful girl, still only about twenty, so it's hard to imagine she won't bag a husband sooner or later.
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