Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey
In 1816, prior to the publication of
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen stated: ‘The
public are entreated to bear in mind that
thirteen years have passed since it was
finished, many more since it was begun, and
that during that period, places, manners,
books, and opinions have undergone
considerable changes.’ Her concerns arose
from the fact that the popularity of the
sentimental and Gothic novels which she
was parodying in Northanger Abbey might
have declined, and thus the point of her
work could be lost. Similarly for us today, it
is essential that we have some knowledge of
those works, whose excesses Austen was
quietly mocking, in order to fully understand
and enjoy Northanger Abbey.
Jane Austen was born on 16 December
1775, the seventh child of the family. At
that time, her father was Rector of the
Hampshire village of Steventon, near
Basingstoke. She was a well-educated
young woman and her early years had
already seen her producing works for the
amusement and entertainment of her family.
She particularly enjoyed penning burlesques
of popular romances, and A History of England by a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant
Historian was one of her early, unpublished
works which suggests her natural gift for
gentle irony. Not surprisingly then, this is the
style of Northanger Abbey.
Jane herself tells us in her advertisement
for Northanger Abbey that the work was
completed in 1803 but in fact she had been
working on it as early as 1798 and 1799.
Then entitled Susan it was purchased for
£10 by Crosby, publishers of the then
popular Gothic romances. These works,
whilst retaining the romance of sentimental
novels, added the elements of melodrama
and fear. Crosby, however, did not publish
Jane’s work and in 1816 the manuscript was
bought back, by which time she had made
changes, including renaming her heroine
Catherine. By then, also, her other great
works had been published: Sense and
Sensibility in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in
1813, Mansfield Parkin 1814 and Emma in
1816. After Jane’s death in 1817
Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were
published by her brother, Henry. He was the
one to formally reveal her authorship since
the four titles published in her lifetime were done so anonymously. Northanger Abbey
and Persuasion were published together as a
four-volumed work, the original Northanger
Abbey being in two volumes, with Chapters
1 to 15, mainly concerning events in Bath,
comprising Volume 1, and with Volume 2,
containing Chapters 16 to 31, describing
events at Northanger Abbey.
Jane Austen led a calm and
unremarkable life. She did live for a while in
fashionable, elegant Bath after her father
retired in 1801, and following his death in
1805 she also lived in Southampton.
However, in 1809, together with her mother
and sister, she moved to the village of
Chawton in Hampshire which she much
preferred. She was said not to ‘. . . meddle
with matters which she did not thoroughly
understand,’ and, in spite of having two
brothers in the Navy, she makes no
references in her work to significant events
of the time, notably the French Revolution
and the Napoleonic Wars, even though,
living near the South Coast, invasion might
have seemed a possible threat for her.
Although she herself said that, ‘Three or
four families in a country village is the very
thing to work on,’ in Northanger Abbey she
chose to place her heroine in Bath. Here, as
later at Northanger Abbey itself, Catherine
Morland, a young woman about to enter adult life, is placed in a new situation, where
the way in which she handles the people and
situations she meets allows readers to judge
her. In Austen’s time readers would probably
have experienced Bath for themselves and
she therefore does not feel the need to
provide lengthy descriptions of its
appearance or of the pleasures available
there. Similarly, sentimental and Gothic
novels were well-known to readers at that
time, and Austen makes reference to Mrs
Radcliffe’s novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho,
expecting readers to appreciate her parody.
She places Catherine in Northanger Abbey, a
modern, comfortable home, but whose
name suggests some sort of mysterious
Gothic ruin. Similarly, Catherine herself is a
parody of the heroines of sentimental
novels. She is not prone to excesses of
emotion, apart from her rather out-ofcharacter
behaviour when her imagination
allows her to become somewhat deluded
regarding the fate of General Tilney’s wife.
Even abductions of heroines are parodied,
with Catherine ‘abducted’ by John Thorpe
for a carriage ride she does not really wish to
accept, and by General Tilney who whisks
her off to Northanger Abbey, his mistaken
belief that she is an heiress being a further
parody.
Jane Austen never married although she was reputed to have become romantically
attached in 1802. The man in question died
in 1803, and in that same year Jane received
a proposal of marriage from a wealthy
Hampshire landowner. She accepted his
proposal, only to retract it the following
morning. In Northanger Abbey love and
marriage provide an important theme, with
Austen finally bringing Catherine and Henry
together, after an enforced separation by her
equivalent of the villain of the piece, General
Tilney. She completes her work with one
final parody of the sentimental novels,
when, instead of their preaching conclusions
she wonders whether her work will be seen
to ‘…recommend parental tyranny, or
reward filial disobedience.’
By 1816 Jane Austen had become
seriously ill and was taken to Winchester to
be under the care of the best doctors.
However, within two months of arriving
there she died, on July 18th, at the age of
42. Austen was very modest about her gift
for writing, describing her work as ‘...that
little bit (two inches wide) of ivory, in which
I work with so fine a brush as produces little
effect after much labour’. She was only
moderately successful in her life-time, and it
was not until the twentieth century that her
works became established favourites.
Notes by Helen Davies