Northanger Abbey

The dangers of reading novels

This light and charming Austen novel makes ironic digs at a wide range of folks: novel-reading impressionable young women too inexperienced to appreciate the dangers their desire for excitement can lead to (in this case the heroine Catherine Morland); novel-reading men who only read trashy novels (thus giving novel-reading and -writing a bad name); the huge but perhaps regrettable influence on the reading public of Gothic romances; people who don't say what they mean or who flatly lie (though charmingly) to get what they want; people who marry for money and who cynically believe everyone else does or should do; people who avoid reading difficult material; men who can only talk about what interests them (horses, hunting, racing, dogs) and assume no-one cannot be interested in those things; tyrannical fathers; inconstant though bright and charming female "friends"; young, impressionable women who have been brought up to doubt their own opinion and judgement, and finally the men who bring them up this way because that makes for the kind of pliant women they prefer and think desirable.

As usual, Austen uses irony throughout. Sometimes it is obvious, as in the famous opening lines of Pride and Prejudice. Sometimes it is lmao-hilarious, as when Mrs Allen cannot quite recall if the Tilneys parents are also staying in Bath... or dead. At other times it is not so obvious: for example, to what extent is Austen proposing Catherine as a model, and to what extent is she mocking her and the people who have made her that way, and is she even quietly mocking the reader who has fallen victim to the stereotypes of the day?

There were several instances of humour which to my mind recalled Oscar Wilde.

This novel can be understood on several levels: the first is obviously a mockery of the fantastical yet fantastically popular Gothic novels of Radcliffe, Lewis and Le Fanu. Another is as a morality tale, warning of the dangers of such literature. On yet another level it is a short Bildungsroman showing the education of a naive and impressionable, though intelligent, young woman. And on another level, it can be read as a criticism (in some places gentle, in others more pointed) of society's manners and morals, and a reminder of Christian values.

Each time I read it, I get something different out if it.