Northanger Abbey Has No Place On A Course About Romanticism – Discuss Essay, Research Paper

A view commonly expounded about Jane Austen, as a conservative writer of novels of manners, sentiment and emulation, tends to imply that she has no place in discussions of literary Romanticism, principally because she is seen to support and uphold the class system and society of the day. Some critics have gone so far as to suggest that her work is about little more than the trials and tribulations of the middle class woman engaged in the important business of finding a suitable husband. Charlotte Bronte was also reputed to have found Austen’s work “deeply unromantic” (Jane Austen:The Critical Heritage, New York 1968.) Walter Scott, on the other hand, paid great tribute to her artistry (Critical Heritage) and some modern critics such as Stuart Tave and Susan Morgan have suggested affinities between her work and that of the Romantic poets. This essay will explore to what degree these critics are credible, and, whether they are or not, if Austen’s novels must necessarily provide little material of interest for a student of Romanticism. To ascertain the above, it would be useful to determine what exactly is meant by ‘Romanticism.’ This is no mean feat, and has been the subject matter of many critical texts and seminars. In its widest sense, the term ‘Romantic’ tends to be applied (when used in a literary sense) to material written in the period immediately following the French Revolution, carrying on for around forty years up until about 1830. In this respect, Northanqer Abbey, written in 1803, certainly would qualify as Romantic literature. However, many other characteristics have been attributed to Romanticism which Northanqer Abbey would appear at first not to possess. Even if this is accepted, and there are many reasons why it may not be, the fact that Jane Austen’s work ls so different to that of most of her contemporaries may well be reason enough for it to be studied, but there are many features of it other than this which may make it of interest to the student of Romanticism and contribute to a wider understanding of the period in which it was written, which will be considered below. Northanqer Abbey is usually presented as a pastiche of the Gothic novel, such as Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho which was particularly popular at the time Austen was writing and is indeed mentioned in the novel as a book which has absorbed the over-imaginative heroine Catherine. The Gothic novel is usually placed within the bounds of Romantic literature and there are several reasons for this. Probably the most important is that the Gothic use of terror or the unheimlich is often seen to be an expression of cultural unease and/or a desire for change. This would very naturally tie in with the Romantic desire for revolution or sweeping political change, and also the Apocalyptic visions of the millenarians. The Gothic is usually seen as a particularly feminine form of expression and the powerless position of the heroine, surrounded by usually male figures threatening at the worst death, rape and imprisonment, and at the very least deception, loss of virtue or integrity can easily be seen to be an articulation of the discontentment of women forced to be utterly dependent on men for their position in society and the powerlessness and frustration of having very few rights at all. Typically, a middle or upper class woman at the time Austen was writing would have passed directly from the jurisdiction of her father who would have had complete control over her and probably chosen her husband, into the power of that husband against whom, once married, she would have had no redress. She belonged to him to do with as he liked, and although he had every right to divorce or put away his wife, this option was not open to her. Therefore, the common Gothic image of the wife locked away in the tower or secretly murdered that we see parodied in Northanqer AbbeY is very likely an expression of a real fear in an extreme form. However, ls the Gothic being parodied as much as it appears to be in the scenes where Catherine becomes convinced that General Tilney has either locked away or killed his wife, or indeed throughout the novel’s pseudo-Gothic scenes? Although Catherine’s fears are unfounded her terror is real, even if wished for, and the use of terror in Northanqer Abbey is not so very different to the use of terror in Radcliffe’s work. There too the heroine’s worst fears are unfounded and people locked in towers are usually, once again, nothing but a figment of the heroine’s imagination. Things only appear to be unnatural. Sinister people and scenes do abound however, and these are usually the basis for the heroine’s often over the top agitation and beliefs; most of us would imagine we heard unearthly noises if locked up in a ruined castle on a stormy night, for example. In Northanqer Abbey, however, the heroine would appear to have no such basis for her fears at first inspection. She is simply visiting well off friends in their country residence and certainly not against her will. Her principle preoccupation is in getting the hero Henry Tilney, who is ideal husband material of course, to notice her. As a young woman with little experience of the world and much experience of Gothic novels, she also hopes to find that Northanger Abbey is a creepy, haunted and very romantic place to fit in with her fantasies and desire for excitement. This desire for excitement supposedly induced by reading too many ‘horrid’ novels may itself be an observation on the state of the young woman who has little education other than “accomplishments” and nothing other than socialising to occupy her mind. Mary Wollstonecraft would probably have agreed that the female mind, rather than being inherently weaker, was in fact so under-used that it was hardly surprising that it was so easily absorbed by the fiction that Northanqer Abbey is apparently mocking. To assume that Austen was sneering contemptuously at the Gothic novel in Northanqer Abbey is in my opinion a very naive and limited standpoint to take. Austen and indeed the whole of her family were avid novel readers and she subscribed to Camilla for some time in the late eighteenth century. It could be argued of course that this may have been purely for research purposes but the documented volume of her reading in itself would probably put paid to this notion, even were it not for the defences of the novel we see in Northanger AbbeY (Chapter 5) along with extracts from her own personal letters such as this, in relation to being solicited to subscribe to a new circulating library: As an inducement to subscribe Mrs. Martin tells us that her Collection is not to consist only of Novels, but of every kind of literature, &c.&c.-She might have spared this pretension to our family, who are great Novel-readers & not ashamed of being so;-but it was necessary I suppose to the self-consequence of half her Subscribers. (Jane Austen’s Letters-Oxford 1959) It would appear from this letter that rather than condemning the novel, she is rather being disparaging towards those who do. In her opinion, the novel was a very enjoyable form of entertainment and those who belittled them were employing some degree of intellectual snobbery in their assessment: the main problem was that for many women they were the only intellectual stimulation they could expect out of life. The plot of Northanger Abbey is also very much in keeping with the Gothic genre, although it does not at first appear to be so. Despite the fact that Northanger is not a haunted, terrifying place, Catherine is still in the classic Gothic heroine’s circumstances; she is an innocent abroad being played upon by the experienced; the Thorpes to begin with, then General Tilney and even Henry in his manipulation of her imagination on the way to the Abbey.(ppl56-7) General Tilney, believing her to be rich, plans to marry her to his son; she is unaware of this of course; the irony lies in the fact that this is her wish also: he is even more unaware than she is. However, even this works against her as when he is enlightened to her relative poverty it is only her integrity that is damaged as she is thrown out of the abbey due to the Generals total power in his house. Catherine is totally unaware of the plans he has despite numerous very clear signs he presents, such as asking repeatedly for her opinion on how the house should best be decorated; similarly she is totally uncomprehending of Isabella’s use of her to get closer to her brother in order to put into action her plans for a financially rewarding marriage (although she is once again as deluded as General Tilney) and she is again almost unbelievably unconscious of John Thorpe’s interest in her and is shocked when she discovers the root cause of his strange behaviour. Like other Gothic heroines she is always looking the wrong way when she could have unearthed a clue to the strange behaviour or mystery surrounding her. Pitt’s theory of the later Gothic novel suggests substituting a marriage for a murder in the plot, and if we do this we can clearly see the way the plot of Northanqer Abbey corresponds to that of the classic Gothic novel. Catherine is taken to the abbey by General Tilney to marry his son (be murdered.) She is isolated and totally unaware of his plot, although she is aware that he is “less than agreeable”(pp223-4). Again, plans for her are being made without her consent and someone experienced is trying to manipulate her to do what he wishes. The easily identifiable parts of the novel which allude to and supposedly mock the Gothic are in fact very few, however. The whole incident of Catherine believing the General to have murdered his wife and her consequent enlightenment take up only six chapters of thirty-one. Perhaps more importantly for the student of Romanticism, the question seems to be whether these “causeless terrors” and “superstitions” surround or actually arise from the soul of the heroine. The cultural unease Austen felt at the changes that were happening in the society of the day make themselves felt through both her heroines and her treatment of other characters. At the time she was writing, the increasingly hegemonic middle-class was beginning to swallow up the lower gentry to which she belonged and she was not in favour of this at all. Merchants and tradesmen in Austen’s novels are invariably buffoons or have sinister intentions and social climbers like the Thorpes are also portrayed in a very poor light. Warnings are given against attachments based on financial gain such as Isabella’s engagement to Catherine’s brother: they invariably end unhappily. It does however seem to be acceptable to elevate one’s social position by marriage as long as romantic love is involved and one belongs to the ranks of the gentry. By happy coincidence, Catherine is able to combine the two in her engagement to Henry Tilney. Austen expresses a wish for the upper and lower gentry to be united through marriage against the infiltration of the dreadful merchant classes. For this reason, she is often classed as a conservative and backward looking writer, but dismay at the route society was taking with its utilitarian economics, industrialisation and finance based power is a common theme in almost all Romantic literature. Whilst Austen’s reaction to this set of circumstances is undoubtedly very different to that of Shelley, for example, she is not necessarily an absolute opposite to him. Whilst she appears to be upholding the class system to which she belongs, her ironic if somewhat gentle observations mock many of the social conventions around her. Her heroines themselves also often find fitting into their assigned roles difficult and at times uncomfortable. They appear too unassuming and uncorrupted to be successful in the world into which they are being initiated. However, in the end they unknowingly subvert the situation they find themselves in to their own advantage due to their high moral character, purity and belief in love, as Catherine does by intriguing Henry with her naivety, innocence, exuberance and obvious infatuation with him. This is actually admitted to at the end of the novel(pg 271). She eventually attains her goal of marrying him by not employing deliberate means to do so. She is extremely passive in all this but she matures enormously throughout the novel and by realising her folly over her unnatural imaginings and through her discoveries about the rather unsavoury characters of Isabella and John Thorpe and General Tilney she learns a lot about the world she must survive in. In Northanqer Abbey as in many of Austen’s other novels, she depicts the self’s struggle to master the social languages of the time and to use them to create an independent place for the self in society: Austen images this place as a marriage of true minds and important social status and responsibility for the heroine as wife of a landed gentleman or dedicated professional man, such as Henry Tilney. Austen’s romantic comedy focuses on love as an individual absolute, opposed by social inequalities associated with an old social order ripe for reform, if not revolution. Her comedy is not revolutionary, however, and does not hold up love as a value transcending all social convention and tradition, like the Romantic poets. Rather, the plots of her novels enact the integration of the authentic individual self (the heroine) into a social order and social institutions that remain fundamentally unchanged outwardly, but are nontheless renovated from within by the authentic beings now inhabiting them. Austen’s novels deal very much with the central practice of the self engaged in society and the heroine’s vision; her understanding of herself and her world. Northanqer Abbey is about perception and the drama of consciousness; played out in a comic universe with a romantic comedy plot. Here clear correlations with Romantic concerns can easily be seen. Perhaps the most convincing reason for them to be studied is the concern they express over the problems facing the women reading them. Austen shared a common ideal with Mary Wollstonecraft in believing in the importance of educating women and training them to think rationally. Austen’s heroines are always rational by the end of the novel; silly, overemotional girls are ridiculed and get their come-uppance or get left behind. Austen offered a new archetype of the gentlewoman struggling for responsible autonomy. Her heroines do this by marrying the ‘right’ man of course but they have to display a degree of independence and sense before they succeed in finding happiness with the ideal husband. Although not explicitly a feminist along the lines of George Eliot or Virginia Woolf, she is no less aware of the problems facing women. Economic dependence on a spouse or male relative was a reality for most middle and upper class women; Jane Austen attempted to deal with it pragmatically to what she believed was the woman’s advantage. She also shows that a girl such as Catherine may discover the positive advantages of maturity over childishness despite the encouragement of her society to remain immature. In The Madwoman in the Attic Gilbert and Gubar argue that the decorous surfaces of Austen’s works conceal an explosive anger: It is shocking how persistently Austen demonstrates her….dissatisfaction with the tight place assigned women in patriarchy and her analysis of the economics of sexual exploitation. (pgll2) Austen’s heroines although seeming to submit to the male power around them as they must do to survive, in fact use silence as a means of manipulation, passivity as a tactic to gain power, and submission as a means of attaining the only control available to them. It is the very fact that this is the only means of power available to them that makes Austen angry, but she presents the most practical means of overcoming it that she can for women who do not have the social or economic independence to romantically disappear to foreign lands to find themselves; indeed her preoccupation with annuities and incomes can in this light be seen as a means of safeguarding the limited power her solutions offer. Choosing the right husband, therefore, is one of the most central themes in Northanqer Abbey and in Austen’s work as a whole, but this does not make her novels any the less significant in a study of the Romantic era.BIBLIOGRAPHY Austen,J./Northanger Abbey (Wordsworth 1993) Gilbert,S.& Gubar,S./The Madwoman in the Attic (Yale 1979) Kelly,G./English Fiction of the Romantic Period (Longman 1989) Radcliffe,A./The Mysteries of Udolpho (Oxford 1986) Smith,L.W./Jane Austen and the Drama of Homan (MacMillan 1983) Southam,B.(ed.)/Jane Austen:The Critical Heritage (New Yorkl968)