When I was a very young teenager or preteen I got ahold of a book like no other I'd read to that point or since...a gothic romance. I'm sure the book was too mature for my age and I had no idea really what was going on sexually but I found the story completely titillating. I reread my favorite bits several times and imagined my future self being ravished by some man in a black cape with a candelabra as the only source of light. The action probably took place on a dark and stormy night, too. 😚
I have no idea what the title of the book was or how I got ahold of it. Was it my mother's? It couldn't have been my mother's book. She didn't read stuff like that, surely. More likely it was a book making the rounds among my friend group. I'll blame someone else's mother then. Forgetting the title hasn't wiped the book from my mind, however, and periodically I think back to that book and the young girl who was reading it. She (me) was so naive as to believe the types of interactions in the story were an accurate portrayal of male/female relationships. Surely every woman wants to be ravished, right?
Fast forward several decades to 2008. As an avowed Jane Austen fan I finally decided it was time for me to read Northanger Abbey. I know little about the book other than what I'd heard -- it the first novel written by Austen but one of the last to be published and therefore it is not surprising that the writing isn't as mature as her later books. But I was charmed from the beginning. And imagine me meeting young Catherine Morland and finding her fascination with gothic novels which ignited her overactive imagination, like the book I read as a preteen did for mine. There were seven "horrid novels" mentioned in Northanger Abbey: The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian by Ann Radcliffe and The Castle of Wolfenbach and Mysterious Warnings by Eliza Parsons, and several others. Some were written by women authors and contemporaries of Austen, who must have read them or at least was aware of their reputation before including references to them in her book. By including them, Austen is claiming her place next to them -- women authors.
Now in 2025 it makes me giggle at Catherine Morland's innocence. On a walk with Henry and Elizabeth Tilney, Catherine is reticent to talk about novels, since many people look down on novel-reading in her day including John Thorpe another one of her pursuers. But Henry assures her, "The person...who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid" (Ch.14). In a way he is saying John Thorpe is intolerably stupid, which we come to find out, he is.
Catherine is excited to be invited to Northanger Abbey, fantasizing about a place with a dark past, perhaps there is even a ghost of a scorned nun to haunt the place. The first night she stays in the Abbey there is a terrible storm, which reinforces her notion that terror abounds in such places. She is sure a locked chest in the room must contain some a hidden manuscript or some other secret. All these ideas she gained from the "horrid novels." Later she learned nothing important was in the truck, just a list of household items, and the storm was just a storm. But do you know what? I can imagine myself as Catherine Morland all atwitter with a lit up imagination thinking something brooding is around any corner.
In fact, even though I am now on the 70 side of 60, I still cannot read horror/gothic novels at night. My imagination just doesn't allow me to sleep well if I read a horror novel before bed. Some people love the thrill of being scared. Not me. What if this or that were real? (What was that noise?) Why just the other day I was at the point where I could finish a book before sleep. But the novel, The Turn of the Key, a retelling of the very creepy The Turn of the Screw, was too frightening to read at night. As it turned out I was close enough to the end I should have finished it since I tossed and turned all night fantasizing a ghostly ending, when the ending was actually much more tame.
While some would say Northanger Abbey isn't Austen's best it may be her bravest. Here in the pages Austen stands up as a woman and says that her gender needs to be recognized for their writing talents, too. Perhaps all the books women write need not be horrid novels (gothic romances) but they should be published based on talent, just like men. Perhaps it is Austen speaking for herself in this novel when, extolling the virtues of the reading novels, says "...work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language" (Ch. 4).
Thank goodness for novels, well written or a little less well written, which have kept this woman-child enraptured for a lifetime. Thank goodness for Jane Austen novels! I can reread them over and over, always getting something different out of them each time.
Happy 250th Anniversary Jane Austen! #ReadingAusten250
-Anne
