What to make of the end (4)

Okay, but Austen has been burlesquing something in this novel right? You aren't denying that are you Jules?

No, I don't deny it. And I'll grant that I have been pig-headedly holding off the burlesque as long as I could; always focusing on other aspects of the novel. But there is a reason for this. I think that the target of the burlesque is not the novels but some of the women who read them. And I think that always was the target.

And I still stand by my earlier arguments that this book is not, despite nine million other people saying it is, a Gothic burlesque. It contains a burlesque yes, but my house is not a kitchen because it contains a kitchen.

In that earlier post, I a later book called The Heroine by Eaton Stannard that was written later than Northanger Abbey but published before it. That book actually does what people say this one does. It has a heroine who imagines herself to be like the heroine of a Gothic novel.

I think Austen's point is rather the opposite. She did not, as a lot of male critics of her time did, blame novels for causing women to assume a lot of fanciful nonsense. She thought women behaved like heroines of romantic fiction rather than assuming the moral responsibilities of assuming their roles in life all too easily without any help at all. And I don't think that anyone who has read her novels can deny this. Starting with Mrs. Allen here and carrying on through Mrs. Dashwood, Mrs. Bennett, Mrs. Norris, Mrs Betram. Elizabeth Elliot and (I hope you are sitting down for this one) Emma Woodhouse, Austen targets the follies of women of her age with a pen dipped in acid.

(She doesn't spare the men either but there the criticism is presented differently and I'll get to it with Sense and Sensibility.)

And I think she tells us this is her target in plain language here in Northanger Abbey:

Feelings rather natural than heroic possessed her; instead of considering her own dignity injured by this ready condemnation — instead of proudly resolving, in conscious innocence, to show her resentment towards him who could harbour a doubt of it, to leave to him all the trouble of seeking an explanation, and to enlighten him on the past only by avoiding his sight, or flirting with somebody else — she took to herself all the shame of misconduct, or at least of its appearance, and was only eager for an opportunity of explaining its cause.

You might find the sort of "feelings heroic" that Austen condemns here in a Gothic novel, although you don't find much of it in Ann Radcliffe. But, even if, you don't have to go anywhere so exotic to find it. Walk across any university campus in the land and you will find women (and men) behaving exactly like this. Austen saw it all around her. And I think she also saw it in herself. And that is what she set out to mock here.

In the process, I think she discovered something else. Remember that Austen is already writing her other novels. Northanger Abbey is not the first novel she starts writing it is only the first one she manages to finish to her satisfaction (at the time, later she was not satisfied with it). It's a very different book from the first drafts of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, originally called Mariann and Elinor and First Impressions. Those drafts were epistolary novels, written entirely in letters like those of Richardson, whom she obviously admired profoundly.

I speculated at the beginning of my blogging Northanger Abbey that Austen undertook this burlesque as result of her disappointment in those other efforts. She fell back on something she knew she could do well. Somewhere in the middle of writing, though, I think she realized that she had something good here. That underneath any Radcliffe-like plot, there had to be a real story. A story not requiring all those improbable adventures that could not happen in the modern England that both Radcliffe and Austen loved.

You can find this plot yourself in any Radcliffe book if you care to do the archeology. It's true even today of mystery, fantasy and science fiction. Those genre books that aren't trash, are worth reading for the genuine story under the murder. In Northanger Abbey I think Austen found that genuine story kept getting expanded until all that was left of the burlesque was four chapters squeezed towards the end.

PG Wodehouse once said that his books were like musical comedies without the music. Ann Radcliffe's books are haunted by history. No heroine of hers can get through life without the towering evils of the old Catholic world of superstition and intrigue hovering over her. Jane Austen's novels are a lot like the those Radcliffe novels with all that Romantic flavour taken out.

What to make of the end (3)

Meanwhile, real dangers do threaten Catherine. Dangers she is utterly unaware of and unprepared for. When it all blows up, she cannot even begin to imagine why.

This, strange as this might seem, is a huge moment. This is the foundation of the rest of Austen's fiction. Take a book like Udolpho and take out the elements that Henry says cannot take place in modern England and you have the basis for a different kind of story. You'd have to rethink motives and relations somewhat but you wouldn't have to rethink them completely. Fantasy fiction starts by exempting itself from some rules but it cannot exempt itself from all rules and good fantasy stories must pay heed to non-fantastic motives and relations. Strip the castle out of Udolpho and you have a story about an orphaned girl at the hands of relatives. And this, in turn, is an almost universal story because most of us leave a home where everyone loves us to go out into a world where people's motives are neither transparent nor consistent.

At heart of Radcliffe's fiction are story elements that Jane Austen will use for the rest of her career. If I remember, I'll come back to this when I get to Pride and Prejudice because there is an interesting relationship between it and Radcliffe's The Italian. And again, in Mansfield Park we will see how Austen uses elements from stories about virgin martyrs to shape a new story about Fanny Price.

My point is, that is what she does from now on. Austen looks at certain grand narrative forms and rewrites these stories in terms of the beautiful, feminine, intimate details that other writing has tended to leave out. With Sense and Sensibility, however, she aims much higher. That book doesn't rewrite a Radcliffe story , it rewrites a Shakespeare story.

What to make of the end (2)

The moment that strains our credulity to the breaking point in Northanger Abbey is the moment when Henry reproves Catherine for her suspicions about his father. Even given what we have guessed, and our guess is soon confirmed, about the nature of the relationship between the General and his children, this moment passes too easily. The relationship between Catherine and Henry should be heavily strained by this. At the very least, a grovelling apology is required from Catherine. Nothing like that happens.

Here is what I think actually happens. This conversation exists solely so that Austen can have Henry make her points for her. And here he makes them:

Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?

That is not, as I have argued before, a criticism of Radcliffe. Radcliffe's novels are deliberately set in in countries other than England to make exactly the point Austen is making here—that these things could not happen in England (although they could happen in the exotic south).

But, here is the thing, the whole point is that Catherine's sensibilities as developed by her reading of Radcliffe (and others) has no connection to her life in England. They don't connect in the book because they cannot connect. And that is the message we are to draw.

What to make of the end

The part of Book 2 Chapters 5 to 9 is unlike anything else in the book and it isn't at all clear what they have to do with the rest of it. The temptation is to say it's simply a burlesque of Radcliffe but the rest of the book doesn't do much burlesquing of Radcliffe: only these four chapters do. What is Jane Austen up to here?

The question, "What is she trying to do?" is so tempting but I think wrong. I had a English professor years ago who started our class by saying that anyone who wrote a sentence along the lines of "Shakespeare [or other famous] writer is trying to ..." in an essay or answer to an exam question would be summarily failed. It's a good rule of thumb. It does not matter, and in any case we cannot know, what Austen was trying to do. What matters is what she achieves.

So, here is what I think. There is a burlesque of Radcliffe in this novel. It is forehadowed. When it arrives, it is exactly four chapters long. It does not connect with anything else in the story. So, what Austen achieves is a non-connection.

Huh? I'll explain in another post.

Is Henry a good influence?

On Catherine I mean?

As I have said somewhere before, Henry Tilney sometimes acts in a way that suggests that he is too much at his creator's behest. This criticism has also been leveled at Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice but I think with less justice.

No the problems with Henry are twofold. First, he too often says things just to be playful as is the case in his getting poor Catherine worked up about the mysteries of the abbey. Second, and far more troublesome, he does not have any pedagogical influence on Catherine and she cannot have any on him. Catherine, disturbingly, comes to trust him so implicitly that we have to wonder what chance their future marriage could possibly have as it will be the union of a playful wit and an unthinking follower. He'd be bored, she would inevitably be exploited.

The importance of analyzing motives

Anyone who plugs along this far will have noticed that I am not summarizing the plot the way some other Austen bloggers do. I assume people actually want to read the book or already have. I like to raise questions.

One interesting thing about all Austen novels, I may have already said this somewhere, is how much they share in common with mystery novels. Our heroine has to analyze the motives of others to succeed. With one notable exception, every Austen heroine is a female sleuth analyzing and explaining the motives of others. The glaring exception is Catherine Morland. As Henry points out to her, she unfailingly assumes other people have the best motives.

In Book 2, chapter 3 this weakness of character—and for Austen it is a weakness—reaches its maximum depth. Isabella's perfidy meets its match in Captain Tilney. This sets a course of events that will hurt Catherine's brother but is to his ultimate advantage.

Catherine completely misses the thought process of a loaded line from Isabella. In comes in response to Isabella's making a case on behalf of her brother and Catherine emphatic insistence that she is not interested followed by a declaration that is really a plea: "And you know, we shall still be sisters,"

To this Isabella replies, "'Yes, yes,' (with a blush), 'there are more ways than one of of our being sisters. — But where am I wandering to. ...." Well, as is obvious to everyone but Catherine, she is definitely trying to wander out into something.

How Austen differs from Radcliffe

1. She differs in that there are no actual terrors to drive Catherine Morland's wild imaginings. Unlike a Radcliffe novel, there is no mysterious, half-ruined Gothic castle, there are no huge craggy mountains and there are no evil plots of kidnapping, poisoning or forced starvation in secluded rooms hidden beneath monasteries.

Radcliffe, by the way, didn't think these things happened in England. Her novels are set in far-away romantic lands that are haunted by history. So while it may seem that Austen is mocking the view in Radcliffe, she is merely making the milder case that a heroine living in modern England will not have the experiences Radcliffe describes.

2. Fiction itself, including Radcliffe's is a major contributor to Catherine Morland's imaginings.

3. The sexuality in Austen is direct whereas it is allegorical in Radcliffe. The black veil in Udolpho, for example, is a fairly obvious symbol for female sexuality but a symbol it remains. (Veils and veiling are probably the most common literary device in Radcliffe.) The sexuality in Austen may seem tentative by our standards but sexuality it is. When blood rushes to the cheeks of an Austen heroine as she is helped out of a carriage by some gentleman, it is perfectly clear her blood rushes elsewhere too.

3. The real threat in Austen is never something capable of causing terror. People really do get murdered in Radcliffe. In Austen, the threat is social. Her heroine's risk being ruined in society. What Catherine is threatened by is being cut off from contact with Henry forever because of the prejudice and bad character of the General.

4. Radcliffe's novels are haunted by the past. Beliefs, practices and superstition of the past that threaten our heros and heroines. Catherine risks making a terrible fool of herself because of her infatuation with fiction about these things but there is none of this in her experiences. Jane Austen is thoroughly modern Jane and everything in her stories is very much up-to-date for their time.

What Austen owes Radcliffe

The title on this post will puzzle anyone who hasn't actually read Radcliffe. And most people have not and should feel no shame at not having done so. It's work to read Radcliffe now. I quite like her but can't recommend her with the ease that I'd recommend a others.

For the benefit of those who have a lot of good reading to do before they get to Radcliffe, here are a few things you might not guess.

1. There is no supernatural in Radcliffe. There are no ghosts, no magical powers, no spells, no demons. Every single thing that happens has a natural explanation.

2. The (false) sense that something supernatural might be at work is always a product of the hero or heroine's imagination just as is the case in Northanger Abbey.

3. The hero or heroine's wild imaginings get out of control because he or she is in a stress causing situation such as visiting some romantic and awe-inspiring locale. This is very close to but not quite what happens to Catherine Morland.

4. Ultimately, the explanation for the bad things that happen to the hero or heroine is a plainly human cause. There is a person who is motivated by evil will and a lifetime of nursing their vices who is behind it all. Again, Catherine Morland's case is close to this but not quite.

5. Just as the supernatural elements are imagined in both Radcliffe and Austen, it also turns out to be the case that the heroine is faced by some very real threat.

6. Finally, because the supernatural is not real in Radcliffe, the encounters with this imagined supernatural don't drive the plot.

I'll explain the "not quites" in a later posts about how Austen differs from Radcliffe. For now though, I hope the similarity is clear.

Symmetry (3)

I have always thought that TS Eliot's greatest critical failure was his review of Ulysses. He sees the formality that Joyce imposes on the book through the use of Homer as a great triumph. I know this will get a lot of people really angry, but I see nothing but failure in Ulysses. Here is how the Cambridge Companion to Modernism sets it up:

Eliot wanted to make the novel possible again by instilling into it a stricter form. He admired Joyce's use of Homeric myth as "a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history."

Here is the thing, it doesn't work. Empty formalism doesn't work in Joyce and it doesn't work anywhere else either, unless you take the point to be to show how empty modern life is by setting it against the classical form.

And it's a problem in Northanger Abbey too. Not in the same sense, Austen didn't think that applying a formal structure was enough to make chaos meaningful. She thought stories had this structure because life itself, far from futile and anarchic, was best described in certain forms.

No, I think the problem with the symmetrical form here brings out is that the book isn't finished. Austen either planned more revisions or she'd given it up as a lost cause (I'm guessing the latter).

The odd remark

I have been puzzling about a rather odd thing Austen says in the middle of the book:

From the latter circumstance it may be presumed that, whatever might be our heroine’s opinion of him, his [Captain Tilney's] admiration of her was not of a very dangerous kind; not likely to produce animosities between the brothers, nor persecutions to the lady. He cannot be the instigator of the three villains in horsemen’s greatcoats, by whom she will hereafter be forced into a traveling–chaise and four, which will drive off with incredible speed.

Well, that is preceded earlier in the book by another odd comment back in Book 1, Chapter 12. We are at the theatre and Catherine is feeling badly about the incident wherein John Thorpe refused to stop as they went by the Tilney's in his carriage. She is concerned that she has insulted the Tilneys. Seeing Henry at the theatre and concerned that he is being distant and formal, she worries:

Catherine was restlessly miserable; she could almost have run round to the box in which he sat and forced him to hear her explanation. Feelings rather natural than heroic possessed her; instead of considering her own dignity injured by this ready condemnation — instead of proudly resolving, in conscious innocence, to show her resentment towards him who could harbour a doubt of it, to leave to him all the trouble of seeking an explanation, and to enlighten him on the past only by avoiding his sight, or flirting with somebody else — she took to herself all the shame of misconduct, or at least of its appearance, and was only eager for an opportunity of explaining its cause.

What we have here is a contrast. But a contrast with what? We have not seen anything like the "heroic" feelings contrasted with natural feelings here from Catherine before. And she will not, as it turns out, respond this way at any point in the book. What's the point?

Now some might say, you're just being obtuse Jules. You don't want to see the obvious, that this is a burlesque of the Gothic novel. But here is the problem, if it is, how does this fit in. What other events is this in contrast with. The obvious possibility is Isabella's behaviour. These artificial heroic feelings are exactly what we would expect from her. But isn't the whole point here that reading these novels has made Catherine see the world in Gothic terms? That is precisely what has not happened yet.

Is it about to begin now?

Symmetry (2)

Remember that odd authorial allusion to the carriage that might whisk Catherine away.

From the latter circumstance it may be presumed that, whatever might be our heroine’s opinion of him, his [Captain Tilney's] admiration of her was not of a very dangerous kind; not likely to produce animosities between the brothers, nor persecutions to the lady. He cannot be the instigator of the three villains in horsemen’s greatcoats, by whom she will hereafter be forced into a traveling–chaise and four, which will drive off with incredible speed.

Well, she does get whisked away in the novel; she gets whisked away three times.

The first time is when John Thorpe lies to her about seeing the Tilney's heading away in a carriage and then ignores Catherine's pleas to stop. The three villains in that case are John and Isabella Thorpe and her own brother.

The second time is when she makes the trip to Northanger in an actual chaise and four. The rip is slow and boring. The three "villains" are Henry Tilney, Eleanor Tilney and the General.

The third time is at the end of the book when the General arrives and unceremoniously sends Catherine packing. Unfortunately, we don't get three neat villains to tie it up here.

It's not perfectly symmetrical but the cryptic comment happens in the centre of the book and a little off exactly between the first and third carriage rides.

Symmetry (1)

There are a couple of really neat symmetrical elements about the book. I'm not sure what they add up to.

Anyway, remember how I was saying just a while ago that Catherine was reinterprets life events in novelistic, especially Udolpho-like terms back in Book one? She has an experience and then she imagines it in Gothic terms. Well, in book two, that reverses. From here on in, she will first imagine upcoming events in Gothic novel terms and then the actual experience will fail to live up to her imaginings.

Pivotal events (4.5)

And then there is the pivotal non-event. We also get this odd little interjection:

His [Captain Tilney's] taste and manners were beyond a doubt decidedly inferior [to his brother's]; for, within her hearing, he not only protested against every thought of dancing himself, but even laughed openly at Henry for finding it possible. From the latter circumstance it may be presumed that, whatever might be our heroine’s opinion of him, his admiration of her was not of a very dangerous kind; not likely to produce animosities between the brothers, nor persecutions to the lady. He cannot be the instigator of the three villains in horsemen’s greatcoats, by whom she will hereafter be forced into a traveling–chaise and four, which will drive off with incredible speed.

Well, it's obvious you say, this is the beginning of Catherine's imaging herself a Gothic heroine leading to interesting results. Except it isn't because here is the very next sentence:

Catherine, meanwhile, undisturbed by presentiments of such an evil, or of any evil at all, except that of having but a short set to dance down, enjoyed her usual happiness with Henry Tilney, listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself.

Why, the commentary comes from Jane Austen herself and the whole point is to tell us that Catherine has no such thoughts. This is odd because she soon will be having such thoughts. What's going on here?

Pivotal events (4)

And we might include the odd conversation with John Thorpe at the end of Book one where he obviously means to begin making love to Catherine combined with the Isabella's obvious campaign against the Tilney's in the central chapter that begins book 2. This pathetic failure (in more than one sense of pathetic) of a love affair contributes to Thorpe's anger and his subsequent denunciation of Catherine's family to General Tilney.

The only thing all these central events have in common is Catherine's inability to decipher other people's motives and we might clean things up a bit that way. But is that what the book is about?

Maybe.

Pivotal events (3)

Next, we have the arrival of James Morland's second letter and the revelation of the financial settlement being proposed for the young couple. The disappointment of both Isabella and Mrs. Thorpe is obvious to anyone whos name is not Catherine Morland and even she has uneasy feelings she can't quite define.

Pivotal events (2)

Next we have the arrival of Captain Tilney and his obvious interest in Isabella and her encouragement of his attentions.

This is accompanied by Henry noting that Catherine does not wonder much, or worry much, about other people's motives. This is not a pivotal event but it is worth noting how unusual this makes her for an Austen heroine. Some have compared Emma to a mystery novel but, it seems to me as I write this (and I'll have to check this going forward), that all the great Austen heroines behave like detectives trying to work out people's motives.

Pivotal events (1)

The centre, BTW, is Book 2, Chapter 1 or—if you have a crappy edition—Chapter 16.

The first pivotal event is Catherine's attendance at Milsom-street to visit General Tilney, his son and his daughter. The event is a disappointment. Something is wrong but Catherine cannot put her finger on what.

She does decide not to blame the General:

... it had been a release to get away from him. It puzzled her to account for all this. It could not be General Tilney’s fault. That he was perfectly agreeable and good–natured, and altogether a very charming man, did not admit of a doubt, for he was tall and handsome, and Henry’s father. He could not be accountable for his children’s want of spirits, or for her want of enjoyment in his company.

Good heavens, that's free indirect speech. And that has to at least tempt us to think that we are reading something that Jane Austen added while revising the book.

An aside, some critics have argued that Austen always or sometimes equates manners and moral character. Hardly, what Austen believes (not what she assumes) is that good character and manners have a relationship not unlike that of faith and acts in the Epistle from James: "But someone will say, 'You have character and I have manners.' Show me your character apart from your manners and I by my manners will show you my character."

But while you can't have character unless you also have manners, it is certainly possible to have manners without having moral character as both the General and his eldest son show us in this novel.

The centre

The centre of an Austen novel always features a pivotal event. Elizabeth's refusal of Darcy's first proposal is at the centre of Pride and Prejudice. Marianne shows Elinor Willoughby's appalling non-apology letter along with her returned letters from him at the centre of Sense and Sensibility. In Emma it is the arrival of Jane Fairfax's pianoforté. In Mansfield Park it is Henry Crawford announcing his plan to make Fanny Price fall in love with him.

In Northanger Abbey, the centre of the novel features a whole lot of pivotal incidents; features far too many pivotal events. There are three or four depending on how you count them—and I'll count them out ina series of upcoming posts.

The riot that wasn't

Immediately after the discussion of history, we have an entertaining misunderstanding in which Catherine Morland is discussing fiction and Miss Tilney takes her to be discussing fact. Miss Tilney imagines that the truly terrible, meaning hair raising, novel to come out of London that Catherine is discussing is actually real social unrest taking place in that city—a riot in fact..

The first thing we need to remind ourselves of when reading the misunderstanding about "something very shocking" that will come out of London is that riots were not unheard of at the time. The Gordon Riots and the Spa Fields riots were both serious events and Miss Tilney, with a brother in the military, would be quite right to worry about such a thing.

Henry takes Catherine's side here, although he could just as easily have gone the other way. His possible motives for doing so aren't hard to guess. It perhaps does not matter because the lesson seems clear either way: these two women were talking right past one another. They were using the same words to mean very different things.

Except that Henry can tell what both mean.

And Henry's defence

In the end, all Henry Tilney can manage is to argue that history is good for teaching us how to read. Worse, he begins slyly mocking Catherine's intelligence; this is a strange thing for the "love interest" in our story to be doing.

“Very probably. But historians are not accountable for the difficulty of learning to read; and even you yourself, who do not altogether seem particularly friendly to very severe, very intense application, may perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worth–while to be tormented for two or three years of one’s life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. Consider — if reading had not been taught, Mrs. Radcliffe would have written in vain — or perhaps might not have written at all.”

And then Catherine, having been given the opening to talk about what really interests her, gives what Austen describes as a "a very warm panegyric" on Radcliffe, although she does not report its contents.

"Panegyric" is an interesting word choice here. It is the sort of thing you might give if you were talking on a subject of some importance—perhaps even historical importance. Irony? If it is, it's heavy-handed irony of a particularly obvious kind—like making fun of evangelicals at a Darwin convention—that Austen rarely stoops to.

The thing I want to make clear, however, is that neither Henry nor his sister give us a single reason why history should be read in its own right. Nor do they answer any of Catherine's three cogent criticisms: why aren't more women featured; why aren't there more good qualities displayed in the people history is about; why is it so boring.

Catherine does not say, but could, "It's wonderful that people learn to read with history texts but they could just as easily be learned with other, more entertaining books."