'Northanger Abbey' by Jane Austen, a Mother of Novels and a Timeless Reflection of Human Nature

Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen has been interpreted as a parody on the popular Gothic novels of her day, which it may be at times… but not utterly.  Part of the quintessential charm of Jane is that she mocks everyone to a degree, since we all can be so ridiculous, but in Northanger Abbey she takes that mockery up a few notches. Meanwhile, she inspires not just generations, but centuries of future writers!

Listening to Northanger Abbey specifically reminded me of plot lines used by other cherished authors:

Emily Brontë

Most notably, there’s Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights: both Catherines (the novels' female protagonists) grow up rather wild and are only recently civilized, though Wuthering Heights’ Catherine makes a feistier adult. I suspect that Emily Bronte took Catherine’s gothic-parody ideas and ran with them, showing just how powerful gothic elements can be! The wild weather, haunted-seeming gothic estate, etc. set the mood.  Austen's Henry has purchased a nearby estate, as does the brooding Heathcliff. The similarities go on.

Then there's Anne of Green Gables. Austen’s Catherine is chaperoned in Bath by an older neighbor friend, a Mrs. Allen who is quite indulgent and pleasant.  Well, Anne Shirley also has a Mrs. Allen mentor friend that she adores—so perhaps LM Montgomery’s Mrs. Allen was inspired by this element of Northanger Abbey.

I was even reminded of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett in Northanger Abbey's garden bit with a mystery about the mothers.

Northanger Abbey seems to have inspired elements of innumerable amazing novels, of both witting and unwitting authors!  Or perhaps I’m just a bit quick to draw corollaries. Maybe I'm not the only one:  A recent reviewer also recognized parallels between my first novel, Silk: Caroline’s Story, and Northanger Abbey, which is what sent me back to revisit this long-forgotten novel. I’d read an omnibus of the complete Jane Austen novels, including Northanger Abbey, while in college, one lazy summer when I was about 20 years old; now that I’ve just listened to it on audiobook, I'll say that while Silk seems not to have quite the acerbity of Jane Austen, she may have influenced my writing more than I knew.

For example, I found myself relistening to a striking section that just made me laugh—Austen forgets the novel entirely, ranting for pages in a tirade about authors maligning novels and novel-reading in their own writing. With biting wit, she leaves her own novel behind entirely, that whole ‘breaking the fourth wall’ technique.  It’s great.  The third time I listened, I made my Austen-hating husband join me.  His evaluation?  “That was badass.”  So now I’m convinced that even though he still refuses to listen to her, he couldn’t possibly hate her as much as he says he does.

That rant reminded me of a section of Silk in which Caroline goes on in praise of her cheap dime novels; she’s impatient with her brother John’s penchant for Shakespeare—as with Austen, customary literary regard is flipped on its backside. Could this be because I absorbed Austen’s sharp sermon when I was twenty?  And Caroline does go on more than I expected her to (inexplicably, to my authorial dismay), akin to Jane Austen’s strange detour from her story to have that rant.  Austen was impatient with well-done novels being looked on as fluff or silly, saying instead that novels are some of the most astute, insightful perspectives on human nature. I don’t recall exactly how she put it, but go, Jane!  She also talks about other writing being perceived as more high-minded when it really isn’t.

Given this rant of hers, I'm hesitant to cast Northanger Abbey as a full-on parody of the Gothic novels of her day. Austen merely illustrates a girl who is a bit swept away by fanciful notions of murders and hauntings, no doubt mocking some of her own thoughts after reading some popular Gothic novels. She was capturing human nature there, laughing at herself and others. There's an analogy to be had for this situation (demanding respect for novels while mocking the Gothic novels) in Silk as well, as what my Caroline fervently insists a novel should do in her diatribe… well, Silk does not necessarily do.

Then there's a situation in Northanger Abbey where Catherine worries about a carriage’s safety, and her antagonist blows off her concern, creating an expectation in me that there would be a terrible accident at some point in the novel. I waited and waited for it. I’m sure I had the expectation the whole time I was reading the novel the first time, and that expectation may have been fulfilled with Sam’s accident in Silk. There’s a mistreated horse, too, in Northanger Abbey, so like I said, many hints of Silk there. Anyhow, I’m delighted with the Jane Austen comparison, though the books have notable differences, even in genre.  Catherine is smitten with this Udolpho novel in Northanger Abbey, one of those completely sensational thrillers (she says horror), and Silk is perhaps more of a hybrid that way than a strict Austen-style book, as mine has ‘the detritus [of Jessies’ jealousy] littering the Lowcountry landscape”.  Arson, murder, etc.! 

Such interesting corollaries for generations of unwittingly inspired authors, even as the number of authors trying to write Jane Austen spinoffs is already mind-boggling. I suppose there’s an eager market for them, though! But regardless… what an honor for my first novel to be compared to Jane Austen’s first novel (albeit one of her last ones published—posthumously, in fact)—and to then see the similarities for myself, to my own surprise!

All this said, I should share at least one critique of this novel—or, I should say, of Catherine's character in the novel. At the beginning of the story, she is charmed by and befriends beautiful Isabella, who alleviates Catherine's boredom and demonstrates many characteristics of a true friend.  They become attached, spending their days together.  Later, when ill fortune befalls Isabella, much of it through her own poor choices, Catherine has no compassion whatsoever for Isabella.  I could understand better if Catherine were torn about it and finally decided to spurn Isabella anyhow, but Catherine seems to have no qualms whatsoever about turning her back on her unfortunate, flawed best friend—not even seeming to miss her—and I ended the novel liking Catherine far less than I had throughout the rest of it, wondering if she'd ever had any true affection for her friend. Isabella had actually shown herself to be a far truer friend than Catherine. Perhaps General Tilney delivered a sort of retribution (energetically-speaking) when shortly afterwards he mirrored Catherine's judgmental spurning and kicked Catherine out of his house after having so doted on her. You have to wonder about such times when people were so quick to turn their backs on their friends and loved ones, when proper conduct mattered far more to them than friendship or affection. Yet... I'm not so sure that human nature has changed so much in the past couple of centuries, so I'll conclude yet again that this is not so much a statement of the times as it is a timeless reflection of human nature, unfortunately.  [Note: I am discussing the book here, not the film adaptations. Isabella might be depicted a bit differently in the films!]

An illuminating aspect of Austen’s writing is that it is contemporary for her time, so when she describes their notions and ideas, habits and surroundings, I don’t have to wonder, “Does she have that right for the period?” Wonderful how writers can speak to us through the centuries. For example, General Tilney is constantly consulting his watch, so watches are apparently not anachronistic to the early 19^th century. Her contemporary status also cleared up another confusion: I've heard that Jane Austen is one of the earliest popular novelists, but her character Henry Tilney argues that he’s read hundreds of novels. Even Sophia Dorothea (a century before Jane Austen, another of my protagonists) had novels to read, and I’m relieved to hear just how very prevalent they were by Austen’s time. I suppose one might point out that Jane Austen actually is one of the earliest still-popular novelists, though!