"Northanger Abbey" Review by Joyce
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“The wish of a numerous acquaintance in Bath was still uppermost with Mrs Allen, and she repeated it after every fresh proof, which every morning brought, of her knowing nobody at all.”
--Jane Austen
Let me admit, that, until I read Northanger Abbey, I was a Jane Austen virgin. Although I lived for a while with one of Austen’s biggest fans, I was more likely to be curled up with a sci-fi or computer book. In short, I had to be re-programmed to appreciate the classics in general and Jane Austen in specific. Please consider this when reading my comments.
Twenty three years have elapsed since my last teaching assignment; forty since college, and yet I find myself thinking about Cliffs Notes. The booklet sized analyses, much sought after by students and almost universally disdained by English teachers intended to lead the student through the intricacies of great literature, such as A Tale of Two Cities or Anna Karenina. More often students sought them as an alternative to reading the book, thus the disdain they received from teachers, who might otherwise have used them as a teaching tool to be read alongside the novel. I suppose a purist might insist that one should form one’s own thoughts regarding the book. However, as a teacher, I was a pragmatist. Sometimes the intricacies of the author’s prose could turn opaque, leaving the reader, especially an inexperienced one, at a loss to understand the plot, much less any accompanying symbolism. If Cliffs Notes helped to clarify the plot and introduce the symbolism in understandable terms, who am I to disdain them?
A Northanger Abbey Cliff's Notes version might have helped me understand the intricacies of the ending, which came tumbling at me so fast I scarcely knew what hit me. No ending has taken me as much by surprise since I read Georgette Heyer’s The Black Moth. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy my first venture into Jane Austen. However, it got me wondering how a laundry bill could become such a pivotal symbol in the progress of the story and wishing I had paid more attention at its discovery.
My real issue with the ending was that I understood on some level what happened, but the dénouement was not spelled out for me as I expected it to be. This is not so much a fault of Jane Austen as it is of my inexperience in reading Jane Austen. Should you read Northanger Abbey? Absolutely. But I admonish you to pay careful attention when you do. Do also enjoy Ms. Austen’s turn of phrase, an example of which appears above, because very few people can put together a sentence the way Austen does. Cliff’s Notes wouldn’t hurt, either.
Discussion
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TEAM TILNEY REPRESENT!
Didn't you at least love my Henry a little bit? Was he not witty, handsome, and stylin' in his great coat of many capes? 😉
The ending, in my opinion, is a bit of a nudge in the ribs of Mrs. Radcliffe, whose Mysteries of Udolpho very much informs Northanger Abbey, wraps up a lot of loose ends very quickly and (again in my opinion) rather lamely. The black veil, for instance. Remember Catherine was so engrossed in what lay behind it? Emily St. Aubert, the heroine of Udolpho--unlike Catherine Morland, Emily is a true heroine with all the perfections--swoons when she peeks behind that black veil. What is there? Something so horrible she can't even think about it! The narrator hints and hints that it is Signora Laurentini's skeleton, just as Catherine thinks, but at the end we find out...it is something else, and something very stupid.
Also, there are some characters, Henri and Blanche de Villefort, who wander in in the third act of the novel and basically take over, probably because they are way more interesting than the purported hero and heroine. Terry Castle, in her introduction to the Oxford Classics edition of Udolpho, suggests that they might even have inspired another brother and sister combination, Henry and Eleanor Tilney.
In other words, the plot of Udolpho is a bit rambly and messy, and I think Jane Austen was commenting upon that fact with her relation of the Viscount to his left-behind laundry lists. (And that whole incident of Catherine finding the laundry list and thinking it was something horrid is a parody of the typical horrid novel, as well.)
Go ahead and ask questions. I am the self-appointed world's foremost expert on Northanger Abbey, you know. 😉
A thousand thank-yous, Mags! Perhaps I don't need Cliffs Notes after all. Next time I'll submit my questions to you. You have also confirmed a notion that I have been harboring during the reading of Northanger Abbey and Nachsturm Castle: I need to read Udolpho.
Who was it who said that if you show a gun on a table in the first act, you had better use it in the third act? That applied to mysteries, but it applies to good plotting in general, and Jane Austen understood that much more than her contemporaries.
I first read Udolpho after seeing a stage play of NA which had scenes from NA juxtaposed with scenes from Udolpho, with the same actors--the actor who played Catherine also played Emily, Henry was Valancourt, etc. It made me curious enough to read the book, and I felt that I understood NA SO much better after reading it. I've since read The Castle of Wolfenbach and Clermont, two of the books on Isabella Thorpe's list of horrid mysteries, and it was fairly obvious that Catherine Morland had read them before she went to Northanger and that they fed her fantasies there. However, the plot of NA echoes the plot of Udolpho in many ways, especially Catherine's movements from Bath to Northanger and why she went there.
Team Tilney indeed - my all-time favorite Austen hero. 🙂
Henry's Da Man!