This post originally appeared on The Austen Connection for the Great Jane Austen Read-Along, in which we read all Austen’s novels this year to celebrate her 250th birthday.
Few stories are as wonderful or as often overlooked as Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1803). The only exception to this is the 2007 film which is, sadly enough, frequently forgotten in the canon of Austen screen adaptations.
I suspect much of this is due to the fact that this is one of Austen’s earlier works and very much a story about stories, or more aptly, how we turn to novels, especially “horrid” ones, to make sense of our own lives. It also represents some of her earliest work in which she was still finding her voice. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s a satire. It’s something a young author might write as she figures out her place in the writing world. It’s a little frivolous and could be easily blown off as silly, just like its heroine, Catherine Morland.
The very first lines of the novel reveal everything we need to know about Catherine:
No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her…the Morlands…were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any (Ch. 1).
What’s more, she is positively unaccomplished and lacking in the desire to improve her mind through study. She is most certainly not a supposed orphan with a mysterious and noble heritage. She is not the beneficiary of a large inheritance. She is not so beautiful that duels would be fought over her. Catherine is, in other words, just like the rest of us: Basic. Restless. Romantic. Hopeful. And, at her age, ready to invoke some serious Main Character energy, as the book community would say today. And that is precisely her charm.
Austen’s tongue-in-cheek opening reminds us that, no matter how ordinary things seem on the surface, no matter how ordinary we seem, we are always the protagonists of our own stories and that they are a good deal more epic than we realize. That’s the beauty of (horrid) novels. They help us put our woes and victories into perspective. Learn from the heroines in those books and forge bravely ahead in our own lives with hope, gumption, and, of course, a novel tucked under our arm.
In fact, Austen goes out of her way in this book to assert the importance of novels and novel readers. In her famous defense of novels, Austen proclaims:
I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it (Ch. 5).
Austen’s intentions are obvious here. Her heroine will read novels. Her heroine will learn from them. Her heroine will be a good deal more sensible than the novel writers who trash the very genre in which they write.
That’s what makes Northanger Abbey a surprisingly thoughtful look at how the books we read shape our understanding of the world and a playful exploration of our own foibles as readers—something any bibliophile can relate to. Even contemporary readers both recognize how fictional worlds can transform our real ones and laugh at our own fanciful imaginations as we fawn over book boyfriends, telenovela-worthy plots (some of which have dragons), and morally grey protagonists, even as we know that’s not what we necessarily want in real life.
In Praise of Horrid Novels
What makes Northanger Abbey all the more engaging, of course, is that the young Catherine Morland isn’t just reading any kind of novels. She’s reading “horrid” novels, as we see in the exchange between our young heroine and her new frenemy, Isabella Thorpe, in Chapter 6:
Isabella states, “[W]hen you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.”
“Have you, indeed! How glad I am! What are they all?”
“I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time.”
“Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?”
“Yes, quite sure[.]”
The more Catherine reads of these titillating tales, the more she begins to (over)identify with the gothic heroines therein and compare her own daily struggles with the over-the-top dilemmas of those novel heroines. It’s easy to poke fun at Catherine, but as an introvert and total book nerd, I completely understand where she is coming from. Even though I am now no longer the young woman making her proverbial debut in society, I still often go to novels—the more horrid, the better—for comfort, advice, and, yes, adventure and scandal. This is why I always look at Catherine and her overactive imagination with fondness and more than a little appreciation. Austen, on some level, approves, too, as her defense of novels is also a call for us heroines to support our fellow heroines.
It is almost too easy to see this novel as a critique of reading gothic novels and to favor sense over sensibility. But this is Austen, and things are never that simple with her. Her tongue-in-cheek tone allows her to get away with a more nuanced critique not of novel readers, but of those who judge them. As Bridget Read points out in her praise of horrid gothic novels, these books are often dismissed by Serious Readers because of their predictable plots. But she rightly points out that "instead of a mark of low quality, that rigid structure, especially for female authors, makes for a powerful exploration of themes of oppression, repression, obedience and sexual rebellion.” Austen, as a female author, understands this. So, too, does any woman living within the rigid structure of society with all the rules and restrictions that entails (read: all women of any era). We find our way, our freedom, our potential to transgress by pushing against and playing with these narrative structures.
Here’s the thing that’s easy to overlook in the midst of Catherine’s comical antics: In many cases, she is right in what she is feeling. Her instincts are spot on, even if she does stir herself into a frenzy wondering what terrible secrets Northanger Abbey—in the novel, a very ordinary-looking building—might hold, or feel conflicted about the Thorpe siblings’ seemingly sincere words that inevitably contrast with their bad behavior. She likes Tilney over Thorpe, even if she can’t explain why at first. She senses that General Tilney is an overbearing, likely emotionally abusive patriarch. And though she can’t quite admit it to herself, she knows Isabella isn’t always sincere, or rather, she feels conflicted when Isabella’s words don’t match with her actions. Catherine’s growth comes not from giving up reading horrid tales, as the book burning scene at the end of the film adaptation might imply, but in learning to trust her instincts and temper her imagination—but only a little on that last one. In fact, she would have never come into her own as a woman without those books.
He Must Have Her…
The 2007 film adaptation takes this exploration to the next level, illustrating for a modern audience just how truly horrid the “horrid” tales Catherine reads are through her increasingly salacious fantasies. Although the novel is seemingly a good deal more chaste than the film adaptation, Austen is clearly drawing on titillating tales that she has read and using them to explore a young woman’s agency in courtship, including her sexual agency. For as much as these books exaggerate the ordinary horrors of daily life, most notably for a woman of marriageable age making her societal debut, these gothic novels also magnify all the sins a proper young lady should not associate herself with: Lust. Passion. Seduction. Ravishment.
These gothic novels are, in other words, irresistible—both to Catherine and the viewer. They offer her (and by extension, us) not only a lens through which she can process her world and enjoy centering herself as the heroine of her own life, but also a vehicle through which she can explore her budding sexuality.
In fact, part of the excitement of traveling to Bath and reading these horrid novels is that Catherine, for the first time, is exploring her sexual agency and the delights of her desirability. She is so easily carried away by the excitement of the novels because this is her first time away from home. As the movie so expertly explores, Catherine is also having a sexual awakening. She is of marriageable age. And for the first time, she is exposed to a world of balls, dancing, soirees, and many an eligible bachelor. She is literally swept off her feet by the sheer novelty of everything she encounters in Bath. It is a world of possibilities—including romantic possibilities—and it is impossible for her not to conflate the excitement of the novels she reads with the excitement of this new world before her.
These horrid novels then become the vehicle not only through which she explores her world, but also where she can safely explore her budding sexuality. As any romance reader will tell you, much can be safely explored in the pages of a book. The 2007 film expertly illustrates that sexuality is a barely contained force within the seemingly prim and proper Catherine as her ravishment fantasies get more and more detailed and lurid.
Catherine indulges in increasingly salacious fantasies that center her as an object of desire to the men in her life. It would be easy to dismiss these fantasies as representations of Catherine’s oppressed state in a marriage market designed to disempower her, or to see these fantasies as Andrew Davies’ and his audience’s, not Catherine’s. But to do so would be reductive and ignore how these fantasies empower Catherine so that she can not only find a relationship of equals, but a passionate romance without sexual shaming.
The more Catherine reads and experiences in her life, the more titillating her fantasies become. First, she is kidnapped by highwaymen who no doubt intend to ravish her—a fact which she seems infinitely pleased by, given her coy smile at the end of her daydream. She then finds herself the subject of a deadly duel between Thorpe and Tilney. There is much moaning and swooning in this one. At the height of her yearnings, her fantasies are right out of The Monk. Tilney, as a man of the cloth, uses a magical branch to spy on her bathing. The walls of the bathroom melt away, and she is out in nature. Suddenly, she finds Tilney looking at her and shrinks down into her murky bathwater, as any virtuous heroine must. Tilney, however, insists that there is ““nothing to be ashamed of” (00:37:48-00:38:37). Here we see a clear tension between the naked, free, innocent Catherine surrounded by nature, and the rigid social and religious norms that want her as both a nubile woman and a respectable lady.
As Bridget Read argues, “The act of reading a salacious, illicit scene is a powerful thing, though it might masquerade as ambivalent.” So, too, is a ravishment fantasy—it’s taboo, it's subversive, it’s empowering. It's also shocking, in the film, to see an innocent young woman like Catherine lost in a series of sexual fantasies in which she takes enjoyment and power from the male gaze, instead of being reduced by it. Moreover, as we find at the end of the film adaptation, Catherine no longer feels the need to be the passive damsel in these fantasies, but an active agent in her sexual desires. She kisses Tilney. With vigor. She even pushes him into a shady grove for more privacy. Thanks to these books, she finds “nothing to be ashamed of” in her desires.
Real Life Gothic
By the end of the story, the boundaries between the horrid novels and her life collapse when Catherine is put in a truly horrific situation of having to travel home, alone, at night, with borrowed money. Suddenly, rough highway men aren’t so sexy, and there are the very real dangers facing a woman on her own. This perilous situation is, moreover, brought on by a true villain worthy of a gothic novel and one Catherine has suspected of misdeeds for quite some time: General Tilney.
Catherine thinks he’s throwing her out because Henry has discovered Catherine getting too carried away with her gothic fantasies and accusing his father of murdering his mother (it is perhaps one of the most classic cases of second-hand embarrassment a reader can experience, seconded only by the Box Hill picnic scene in Emma). But it isn’t Catherine’s foolishness that causes this disaster—it’s General Tilney’s cruelty, as he casts her out immediately once he realizes she is not the rich heiress she was rumored to be in Bath. So murder accusations aside, Catherine wasn’t wrong about the Tilney patriarch’s character.
In this moment, two things happen: First, the gothic, however ordinary and unshaped by supernatural elements, is made real. Second, Catherine (and, by extension, the reader) demonstrates a clear sense of boundaries for what might be fun and titillating within the safety of a novel, and what is truly terrifying in real life. Being a damsel in distress in a gothic novel is not the same thing as being one in real life. Book highwaymen might be sexy. Real highwaymen are not. Both truths exist. Catherine cannot ignore the gothic underpinnings of the marriage market any more than she can’t ignore the burdens of sexual awakening or the pain of being called out for blithely accusing the father of the man you’re crushing on of murder.
Still, this being Austen, our heroine gets her HEA. This is not, in my reading, a story that tempers Catherine’s sexuality or her reading habits—notice how the two are inextricably linked. Instead, this is a novel about becoming the heroine of your own life. Owning your mistakes, trusting your gut, and figuring out your way through a messy world full of intrigue, deceit, and artifice.
Heroes Who Read
Tilney, too, is an avid reader, and, as the seemingly more sensible of the two, understands the power of a good book. In the often-quoted line, he explains, “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid” (Ch. 14). What is more, he unabashedly admits to devouring the work of Anne Radcliffe as eagerly as any reader. He is not, in other words, too good to enjoy a gothic story.
Tilney is set up in strong contrast to John Thorpe who first denies that he reads novels because he always “ha[s] something else to do” (Ch. 7). Thorpe then goes on to prove himself to be intolerably stupid by not being able to tell which novels were written by which authors. He is not, in other words, a reader. Tilney’s enjoyment of novels is another point in his favor, whereas Thorpe’s lack of knowledge and his feigned interest in them reflect his lack of character.
In fact, the book ends with Tilney’s rather romantic flight to Catherine’s house to—gasp!—apologize for his father’s behavior and admit that, despite the way Catherine went about things, she was right about his father. It is assumed that much kissing ensues here, as the series adaptation depicts, even if Austen herself couldn’t respectably write it. This is true Romance Hero Behavior and all the more romantic because it comes from the sensible Tilney.
His grand gesture is, of course, one of the many reasons why we love Henry Tilney (again, so often overlooked in the Austen hero canon that it is shameful). In the end, our Catherine could NEVER be with a man who didn’t enjoy novels as much as she does.
The message is clear: Readers, if you do nothing else, marry another reader. What other recipe for happiness is there?
As for everything else, to borrow a line from Austen, “I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.” In my case, I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be to altogether recommend horrid novels, or reward those who fancy themselves gothic heroines.
Catherine’s Horrid Novels
However you might answer the above conundrum, no examination of Northanger Abbey is complete without a look at the Gothic novels that shaped Catherine’s journey. Below are the plot summaries with each novel, along with their thorough wiki page, because these are actually quite good and can tell you even more about these books than I can squeeze in here. But you should really just do yourself a favor and watch this wonderful lecture by Sam Hirst of Romancing the Gothic, on the horrid novels that inspired Austen’s novel.
Eliza Parsons’s The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793):
Matilda Weimar is an orphan (because of course she is) raised by her creepy uncle who has less-than-paternal designs on her. She is obviously beautiful, innocent, and noble of heart. That cannot be said for her uncle, whom she flees and finds refuge in the haunted Castle of Wolfenbach. There, she learns the terrible history of the Countess of Wolfenback and finds herself drawn to the enigmatic Count de Bouville. Will Matilda escape the clutches of her evil uncle? Will she under the mysteries hidden in the walls of the castle? Will she find true love with Count de Bouville?
Eliza Parson’s The Mysterious Warning (1796):
A dying Count Renaud disinherits young Ferdinand. Why? Because Ferdinand marries Claudia against his father’s wishes. Although Rhodophil, now the sole beneficiary, promises to share his wealth with his brother, something is off. At least that’s what a mysterious ghost implies when it reaches out to Ferdinand from the Great Beyond—and so our noble hero flees and begins a terrifying journey of intrigue, secrets, and the supernatural! Will he uncover the dastardly family secrets that bind Rhodophil and his own wife, Claudia?
Regina Maria Roche’s Clermont (1798):
This novel features another reclusive heroine named Madeline. She lives with her father, Clermont, who has a Mysterious Past. One dark and stormy night, a countess and friend of Clermont arrives at their doorstep and whisks Madeline away to give her a proper education. And by “proper education,” we naturally mean uncovering her father’s shady history and unearthing the long-buried secrets which may or may not reveal Madeline’s noble lineage (spoiler alert: it does).
Lawrence Flammenger’s The Necromancer; or The Tale of the Black Forest (1794):
There is murder. There is violence. There are terrible, terrible goings on in the middle of the black forest. And there are absolutely horrid hauntings. Oh, and a necromancer! This book is a series of interconnected tales of the most shocking variety.
Francis Lathom’s The Midnight Bell (1798):
In which our fearless hero, Alphonsus Cohenburg, fights to reclaim his estate and, yes, STOLEN IDENTITY, after his villainous uncle (yes, we have another one) murders his family and takes everything from him. Along the way, he finds true love in Lauretta, who, unfortunately, gets kidnapped by bandits, because what is a gothic novel without BANDITS? Also included in this horrid novel are ghosts, an evil priest, and the haunting toll of the midnight bell.
Eleanor Sleath’s The Orphan of the Rhine (1798):
Readers, we have ourselves another noble orphan in Julie de Rubine, who is seduced and left with child by an Evil Rake, the Marchese de Montferrat. Julie raises their son, Enrico, and a mysterious orphan, Laurette, at the behest of her seducer with the promise that he will provide for her and the children. Laurette, yes, ANOTHER orphan, grows up, at which point four things happen: she falls in love with Enrico, she resolves to figure out the mystery of her past, Julie kidnapped by bandits (seriously, they are everywhere in these books), and Laurette is sent to live in a gloomy castle with SECRETS.
Carl Grosse’s Horrid Mysteries (1796):
The Marquis of Grosse trips and falls into a secret society. There is murder. There is mayhem. There is…an early form of communism? Oh, and lurid descriptions of sex and violence. Shocking!
Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk: A Romance (1796):
This one is a DOOZY. It’s about a pious monk, Ambrose, who, seduced by the devil in angel’s garb, succumbs to his lusty desires, unleashing a torrent of violence and mayhem. There is an inquisition. Bleeding nuns. Evil nuns. Kidnapping. Sorcery. Torture. Graphic violence and scenes of a sexual nature. And, eventually, an HEA for the luckier youths in this tale. But certainly not for Ambrose!
Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794):
Emily St. Aubert, another orphan (yawn), lives with her evil aunt and her evil husband, Signor Montoni. They want control of her inheritance, and so, do what any evil relatives would do: imprison her in a gloomy, possibly haunted, castle. Mysteries and supposed supernatural occurrences abound until she is eventually able to reunite with her true love, Valancourt.
Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797):
Vincentio di Vivaldi falls in love with another orphan, Ellena di Rosalba, but his mother forbids the match because of Ellena’s orphan status. Vivaldi’s mother gets another evil monk to help her keep these two love birds apart. This book has vibes for days—creepy, suspenseful moments, dark secrets, and even darker castles, and the hint of the supernatural.
Catherine Morland reads a book by candlelight, with text "Catherine Morland’s Bookshelf" and "The Bruja Professor."
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