Northanger Abbey
Who is the main character in Northanger Abbey?
What is Northanger Abbey about?
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What is considered the least popular Jane Austen book?
Northanger Abbey, novel by English author Jane Austen, published posthumously in 1817. It is a satire of convention, both social and literary, and is a coming-of-age tale. It is centered on Catherine Morland, an innocent abroad who acquires worldly wisdom: first in the fashionable society of Bath and then at the fictional Northanger Abbey itself, where she gains emotional maturity and learns not to interpret life through her reading of Gothic thrillers.
Northanger Abbey was written about 1798 or 1799, probably under the title Susan (the heroineâs original name). In 1803 the manuscript of Susan was sold to the publisher Richard Crosby, who advertised for it, but, unaccountably, it was not published at that time. The manuscript reverted to Austen in 1816 after her brother, Henry Austen, bought it back from Crosby, and she changed the title and the name of the heroine to Catherine. After Austenâs death in July 1817, it was published under the title Northanger Abbey in a four-volume set with Persuasion.
âIn training for a heroineâ: Characters
The novel begins with a wryly deprecatory introduction:
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No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.
The 17-year-old Catherine, the daughter of a country parson, is unremarkable in every wayâshe is pretty without being beautiful, intelligent without being clever, and belongs to a large family presided over by sensible parents. In short, she lacks the tragic circumstances, besotted lover, and other qualities necessary for a heroine. Catherine accompanies her neighbors, the wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Allen, from their village of Fullerton to Bath and is confronted by the intricacies of polite society. She navigates these with the help of Isabella Thorpe, the eldest daughter of a school friend of Mrs. Allen. Isabella is beautiful, flirtatious, and gossipy, and at first manages to conceal her manipulative nature from the socially inexperienced Catherine. Isabella forms an insincere romantic attachment to Catherineâs brother James, and Catherine rejects Isabellaâs unpleasant and boastful brother John. Instead, Catherine falls for Henry Tilney, a witty young clergyman, and encounters others in his family: Henryâs siblings, Eleanor and Captain Frederick Tilney, and his autocratic father, General Tilney.
Of friendship, love, and books: Plot summary
At first out of place in Bath because they have no acquaintances, the Allens and Catherine are soon immersed in a social whirlwind of dances at the Pump Room, the center of Bathâs social activity, where Catherine meets Henry Tilney. Henry then leaves Bath without preamble, and Catherine is distracted by her new friendship with Isabella, who shares her love of reading and introduces Catherine to the Gothic delights of The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe.
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In The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) the orphaned heroine, Emily St. Aubert, undergoes various sufferings, including imprisonment in the forbidding castle of Udolpho, before being reunited with the man she loves. Regarded as one of the foremost Gothic novels, it was popularly read during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney claims to have read all of Ann Radcliffeâs books and says, âThe Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two daysâmy hair standing on end the whole time.â
James Morland arrives with John Thorpe, who thinks up a variety of âschemesâ to engage the reluctant Catherine. Henry returns to Bath with Eleanor and General Tilney. Correctly perceiving Henry as a rival for Catherineâs attention, John sets out to sabotage her friendship with the Tilneys. In the resulting misadventures Catherine inadvertently fails to keep an appointment with Eleanor and is later refused entry to the Tilneysâ lodgings when she goes there to apologize.
Catherine extricates herself from these difficulties and becomes intimate with the Tilneys; indeed, she is disconcerted by the enthusiasm of General Tilneyâs attentions to her. Isabella and James become engaged, and James secures his parentsâ consent along with the promise of an income of ÂŁ400 a year, which appears to disappoint Isabella. Captain Frederick Tilney joins his family in Bath and begins a flirtation with Isabella, discomfiting Catherine.
At the Tilneysâ invitation Catherine accompanies them to their country estate, Northanger Abbey, full of romantic expectations. However, the house turns out to be rather more prosaic than the thrilling Gothic monstrosity of Catherineâs fantasies. She begins to speculate on the nature of the late Mrs. Tilneyâs death and becomes convinced that General Tilney had incarcerated and murdered his wife. Henry firmly disabuses an embarrassed Catherine of this macabre delusion. James ends his engagement to Isabella because of her dalliance with Captain Tilney. Catherine is further disenchanted with her former friend when Isabella writes to her, indicating that Captain Tilney had cast her aside and asking for help in arranging a reunion with James.
Catherineâs interlude at Northanger Abbey ends abruptly when the hitherto well-disposed General Tilney returns from a brief visit to London and sends her home. Disconsolate, she prepares to resume her old life when Henry, who was away during her ejection, appears. He declares his love and explains that General Tilney had believed Catherine to be an heiress and had turned her out on discovering the truth. General Tilney comes around when Eleanor, who has pleased him by marrying a peer, intervenes on Catherine and Henryâs behalf and they are married.
âBeware how you give your heartâ: Themes and analysis
A novel of manners, Northanger Abbey scrutinizes the social roles, customs, and values of the Regency period (a period in the early 19th century when English monarch George III was deemed unfit to rule and his son, George IV, became regent and, eventually, king), particularly of the marriage market, in which romantic prospects were commonly evaluated by material worth. The often mercenary nature of matchmaking is reflected in General Tilneyâs attitude toward Catherine and in the scheming of the Thorpe siblings. Isabella abandons James when the wealthier Captain Tilney presents an opportunity for social and economic gain, and John pursues Catherine because he believes her to be rich. Both Isabella and John fail to secure their objectives, while Catherine and Henry succeed romantically because of their genuine affection.
âThe person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.â âHenry Tilney
Northanger Abbey is, distinctively, a novel about novels. It combines a satire of social practices of the time with one on Gothic tales of terror. The novel subverts the popular plot devices of Gothic fictionâhaunted castles, supernatural elements, a central mystery, an atmosphere of suspense, and a heroine in difficultiesâand reduces them to absurdity, thereby revealing Catherineâs inability to distinguish between reality and fiction. At the abbey Catherine has to be rescued from her own delusions and attain self-awareness by confronting deceptions that she cannot at first perceive: her own misguided fabrications about Mrs. Tilneyâs death and the less-obvious falsehood that is Isabella.
Northanger Abbey also helped turn an ironic lens on the limitations imposed on women at the time by presenting books as opportunities for intellectual growth. Catherine, who is familiar with both Shakespeare and popular fiction, prefers to read rather than follow socially approved pastimes for women, such as recording the daily minutiae of life in letters. Henry Tilneyâs observations on Catherineâs nonconformism are a fine example of the gentle savagery of Austenâs commentary:
Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenor of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of young ladiesâ ways as you wish to believe me; it is this delightful habit of journaling which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.
As Catherine gains a social education, her understanding of the world shifts. Painfully conscious of her own inexperience and much concerned about etiquette and indecorous conduct, she learns, by her discovery of Isabellaâs superficiality, that propriety is not always defined by social convention and sophistication is no indicator of virtue. In that lesson and in Catherineâs intrinsic integrity lies a morality tale.
Adaptations
Northanger Abbey was adapted as a TV series in 1987 and a TV movie in 2007, the latter starring Felicity Jones as Catherine, Carey Mulligan as Isabella, and J.J. Feild as Henry. The film Ruby in Paradise (1993), starring Ashley Judd, was inspired by the novel. Edinburgh replaced Bath in author Val McDermidâs reimagined Northanger Abbey (2014), one in a modern series of books called The Austen Project, which gave Austenâs novels a contemporary spin.
