Northanger Abbey
: The Grandeur of GothicAlthough poetry was, or at least seemed to be, the most important genre of the Romantic Age, there were also a number of novel genres produced and one of these genres was the Gothic novel. The Gothic novel grew in great popularity because it addressed one of the obsessions of the Romantic period, the supernatural. These books were filled with "romantic unrealities, its strange beauties, its very extravagances"… "and was to a great extent the Novel of Escape from the troubles…of everyday life" (Summers12). People were seeking an escape from everyday life and found that escape in these books. The genre was becoming more and more popular. After a time, when more and more Gothic novels were being written, the genre began to become too fanciful and absurd. Authors were starting to recycle the same plots and scenes and thus, the novel was beginning to be satirized. In the essay "The Structure of Gothic Convention" from The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, Eve Sedgwick writes that the Gothic novel followed a formula which contained the following elements; an oppressive ruin, a wild landscape, a Catholic or feudal Society, trembling Sensibility of the heroine, impetuosity of her lover, tyrannical older man with the piercing glance who is going to imprison and try to rape or murder them, incorporating complex tales within tales, priesthood and monastic institutions, sleep-like and death-like states, discovery of obscure families, possibility of incest, unintelligible writings, nocturnal landscapes and dreams, apparitions from the past, Faust and Wandering-Jew-like figures, civil insurrections and fires, and the "mad houses". Several satiric novels were written to mock the Gothic novel. One of the most famous mock Gothic novels was written by one of the most popular authors of that day, Jane Austen to show the ridiculous nature of the "horrid" novels and the effect they had on the people that believed in them.
Her novel Northanger Abbey was written in 1798, the year after the publishing of The Italian by one of her contemporaries Ann Radcliffe, who was noted for developing the romance novel of terror and influencing Austen’s novel. "In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen had deftly turned the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe to comedy"(Birkhead, 133); Austen has taken a novel type she knows quite well, the romantic comedy, and applied it to the romance Gothic novels that Radcliffe wrote. She takes several of the Gothic novel cliched themes and uses them in the novel to show the absurdity of the art and how they’ve been over-used.
The "Gothic Heroine" is characteristically
a young attractive woman, usually running in terror through an old, dark, crumbling mansion in the middle of nowhere, from either a psychotic man or a supernatural demon" and "is always terminally helpless…but is inevitably ‘saved’ by the good guy/future husband in the nick of time(Virgins in Distress).
Catherine Morland is the heroine of the novel. Austen begins the novel with a comparison of the stereotypical heroines of other Gothic novels. Where the Gothic heroine is beautiful, Catherine was just growing into her looks, and they still were not to be boasted of. While the other young lady was extremely accomplished and intelligent, Catherine’s "proficiency…was not remarkable" ( Austen 818).
Catherine’s family life also differed from that of the normal Gothic heroine. Austen was sure to mention that her family situation was " equally against her" (Austen 817) in becoming a heroine. Her mother was a not a sickly woman, but rather a healthy one that bore ten children without dying in childbirth when Catherine was born. Her father was merely a clergyman and respectable, and "was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters" (Austen 817). This reference was made to counter the usual behavior of the fathers of the typical heroines of Gothic novels (Birkhead,130).
One of the necessary characteristics of a Gothic heroine is that she needs to be extremely beautiful so that she might instantly attract a suitor. Such is the case in many Gothic novels; for example, in Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, the hero Vivaldi is immediately taken with Ellena’s, the heroine of the tale, beauty and seeks to find out who she is and make an acquaintance with her. Catherine has not the luxury of capturing a gentleman’s attention because she does not possess a great amount of beauty. Another problem hindering Catherine is that she does not have any circumstances that would throw a gentleman and future savior into her path.
The next important ingredient of a Gothic novel is the hero, and he can be described as
A sensitive, honorable, feeling gentleman who not only weeps at the landscape, but also manages to stop weeping at the exact moment the heroine needs recovering (Hero or Villain).
The hero is also usually of a higher social class and is wealthier than the heroine, which makes for problems with his family when the hero and the heroine wish to get married. Henry Tilney is the hero of Northanger Abbey. While he does not save Catherine in the sense that the other heroes save their heroines, he does help her to grow. He is very much the romantic hero although he is just as unlikely in this role as Catherine is in hers. He is introduced as a clergyman, which is different than the office of most other heroes of other Gothic novels. He is not the oldest son and thus the heir to his father’s fortune nor is he one of those lords or barons, which Austen mentions earlier in the story. She draws a becoming picture of Henry, but says while he was not quite handsome, he was very near to it (Austen 823). That description is very unlike the description of the devastatingly handsome hero that readers are used to.
The dangers to Catherine are not of the usual type. She is not being held captive by some maniacal murderer, but she is being held captive by her mind and imagination. Henry saves her from the woman she would become if she were allowed to keep her thoughts. She has all but lost herself in her Gothic romances and seems to believe that is the way of life. Many times throughout the novel, Austen mentions that Catherine was "left to the luxury of a raised, restless, and frightened imagination over the pages of Udolpho , lost from all worldly concerns of dressing and dinner…"(Austen 835) rather than deal with the real world around her. Henry does not dramatically tell Catherine that the worlds created in the books are not real. Instead, he talks with her about her books and even admits that he has read all of Radcliffe’s works and enjoyed them.
When he takes Catherine to his family estate at Northanger Abbey, he really realizes what fanciful thoughts Catherine holds about life. She takes what she has read of Abbeys and monasteries in the novels and applies it to what she believes the Abbey will be like; he even asks her "Is it not a fine old place, just like one reads about?"(Austen 883). He makes up a tale about what she is to find once she reaches the Abbey, and her imagination takes over. He describes all of the elements of a Gothic novel; a young lady housed away from the rest of the family, the ancient housekeeper, gloomy passageways, tapestries, violent storms, darkness, secret passageways, "a large, old-fashioned cabinet of ebony and gold", and a hidden manuscript describing the horrors that have occurred at the Abbey (Austen, 883-4). The effect of Henry’s story is that Catherine becomes caught-up in her imagination again.
The events seem to unfold just as Henry says they would. Catherine almost immediately discovers an immense, heavy chest in the corner of her room. The storm Henry spoke of comes on the first night of Catherine’s stay in the Abbey. She is finally able to open the chest, but before she is able to examine herself with the contents of the chest, her candle is blown out. After spending a restless night listening to the roaring sounds of the storm and the "distant moans". In the daylight, her major find turns into mere washing bills, not the manuscript she thought it to be. Catherine’s imagination runs away with her during this event because she relates what is happening to her to what happened in Radcliffe’s novel The Romance of the Forest. In this novel the papers hidden in the chest are actually the story of the heroine Adeline’s father’s death at the hands of his brother. Although Catherine is obviously a little disappointed by her find, she still does not completely let go of her romantic ideas.
Henry leaves Northanger Abbey to go to his parish and his own home. In this interval, Catherine and Eleanor, Henry’s sister begin to discuss her mother and her mysterious death, or at least this is how Catherine sees her death. Catherine finds out that Eleanor was not there when her mother died and her father, General Tilney will not let them into their mother’s room. Catherine pieces this information with the behavior the General seems to show to his wife’s memory (He does not even hang her portrait up, which shows he did not value her) to jump to the conclusion that the General had in fact killed his wife.
Like most of Catherine’s beliefs, the novels she has read also fuel this one. Catherine is being influenced by Radcliffe’s Sicilian Romance , which features an imprisoned and abused wife, when she believes that General Tilney killed his wife. In her quest to prove her theory true, she is again proven wrong. While she searches through the "mysterious" compartments, she is found out by Henry. He discerns why she is in the apartments and tells her she must consider how she came to this conclusion. He then advises her to:
Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you—Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing: where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay every thing open?" (Austen 902).
The first line of the chapter following the above scene is "The visions of romance were now over"(Austen 902). This line conveys to the reader that Catherine has been saved and has grown in the process. She now realizes that real life is not like she read in those novels. Henry saves his heroine just as any true hero is supposed to do. By realizing that the stories were not true, Catherine was able to see human nature for what it was, not what she had read. Her lesson having been learned, there was no longer any reason for Catherine to remain at the Abbey any longer, so the General has Catherine sent away rather rudely to her home.
At this point, Austen chooses to introduce another convention, that of class and social standing. Catherine is at a loss to understand why she had been sent away from the Abbey. Later, she learns that the General invited her to the Abbey under false assumptions. He believes that she is rather wealthy and will make a good match for his on. Upon learning that Catherine is not as wealthy as he first believed, he sent her away so that she would be removed from Henry. Readers of such Gothic novels such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian would know that the hero and the heroine would be together despite social standing. In the end, the General finally agrees to the marriage, and Henry and Catherine are wed at exactly a year from their first meeting, and thus the story has a happily-ever after ending.
There were many satires written on the novel of terror. The genre was moving from the sublime to the absurd. Authors that wrote primarily non-Gothic novels were not the only ones to find the art becoming inundated with these "horrid" stories. Ann Radcliffe also did not approve of the success of such authors as M. G. "Monk" Lewis, who took the Gothic novel from the novel of terror to the novel of horror (Birkhead 185). After Radcliffe’s retirement from the field of Gothic writing, the craft fell to those who no longer honored the art of writing, but only saw it as a profitable venture.
Austen treats this book in very much the same manner that she has in writing her other books. She uses humor and comedy in her novels to point out the humanistic flaws that she wants us to see. She takes care when writing her characters so that we can see that these are human flaws and thus makes her characters more realistic to us. "Taste controls her" and "she is a humorist on the hither side of Caricature" (Bonnell 395). While satirizing the Gothic novel, she does not completely belittle it. She even admits an admiration for the works of Radcliffe through the conversation of her characters. If it is true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, she flatters Radcliffe’s work by using her novels as the framework for her piece. Austen creates a very believable situation from the unbelievable. Catherine grows and finally realizes what is real and what is make-believe. She no longer looks to the books for the way to live; she looks to life.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey (1817). Jane Austen: The Complete Novels. New York: Random House, 1981.
Birkhead, Edith, M.A. The Tale of Terror. New York: Russel & Russel,1963.
Bonnell, Henry H. Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Jane Austen: Studies in their works. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902.
Ruotolo, Christine et al. "Virgins in Distress and Demons in Disguise: Constructing the Heroine’s Identity in the Female gothic" and "Hero or Villain or Hero-Villain?: Defining Masculinity in the Female Gothic" The Gothic: Materials for Study. 2 Oct. 2000 <http://www.engl.virginia.edu/~enec981/Group/
title.html>
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "The Structure of Gothic Convention." The Coherence of Gothic Conventions New York: Arno, 1980.
Summers, Montague. The Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel. London: The Fortune Press, 1969.