Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey is an early work of Jane Austen’s, and is light and playful in tone. The novel exhibits Austen’s skill in dissecting character, society and the individual, but is not as ambitious as later novels, such as Emma and Mansfield Park. It appears Austen wrote the novel more as a frolic than a particularly serious literary work.

It’s hard not to think of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey as belonging to her juvenilia, especially when compared to her five other published novels. It’s true that Northanger Abbey, although written in 1798-99, was revised by Austen in 1803 and sold that same year to a London bookseller, Crosby and Co. Obviously Jane Austen herself thought it worthy of publishing, even if Crosby and Co. didn’t, eventually selling the manuscript back to Jane’s brother Henry Austen in 1817 for the same ten pounds that it was originally sold for.

Northanger Abbey can be regarded as belonging to Austen’s juvenilia for several reasons, most notably because of its novelty value and light tone. The novel weaves together Jane Austen’s instinctive themes as a writer – human relationships, marriage in society, personal growth – with some sideshow literary novelties, notably the Gothic novel. While Austen stitches up these interests and effects together neatly enough, the novel is still a fairly casual mix of satire, romantic plot and chit chat on the contemporary 19th century novel. The title can perhaps be considered a misnomer. The scenes that take place at Northanger Abbey are few.

These sequences at Northanger Abbey, in which the heroine Catherine Morland’s intense reading of Gothic novels leads her to imagine all sorts of horrors, seem like superfluous set pieces. While these scenes have their humour and charm, they seem too easy for Austen. One almost feels that Northanger Abbey was a personal amusement, not a serious literary endeavour.

Northanger Abbey was originally titled 'Susan', with the heroine Catherine Morland bearing that same name. Northanger Abbey would be more appropriately titled 'Catherine', as the novel at heart is about the maturation of Catherine Morland, from naïve and over imaginative youth to a girl who has seen something of the world.

A Gay Character in Jane Austen?

Catherine Morland, a seventeen year old daughter of a country clergyman, is invited by some wealthy neighbours, the Allens, to travel to Bath and enjoy the town’s balls, theatres and other fun social events. Austen does a great job of describing the awkward entry of an uninitiated girl into a great and fast moving social world. Catherine soon makes friends, some good, some not so good. She also falls in love with Henry Tilney, aesthete and reader of novels (something described in Northanger Abbey as a recreation for women and girls). Henry Tilney has other rather feminine attributes, such as a good eye for spotting a bargain fabric, which causes Catherine to almost gasp ‘how strange’. Could she have intimated that he was gay? Jane Austen had obviously met one or two of these types of lads in her day. Maybe she erroneously fell in love with one of them too, like Nancy Mitford did with gay Scottish aristocrat Hamish St Clair-Erskine .

Naturally enough, all ends well and in marriage for Catherine. Northanger Abbey is, for the most part, bubbles and spunk. The more unrelenting critical eye she casts on society in her other novels doesn’t appear here. Austen seems determined to have fun, and her sense of play is certainly infectious. Northanger Abbey is a joy to read, but nonetheless it is really a baby Jane Austen novel, yet to fully grow up into either a Sense and Sensibility or a Mansfield Park.

Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen. Published by Penguin Classics. ISBN: 978-0141439792