I read 'Pride & Prejudice' years ago and didn't like it, and for variety and second chances this year I tried to read 'Emma' (a reread in that case, as I remember giving that one up years ago as well) and 'Sense and Sensibility', and I just couldn't do it. I know they're classics and therefore that apparently means they're perfect mainstays and exempt from criticism, but I couldn't stand Austen's writing style, which put me to sleep (though at least with 'Emma' I was invested enough to keep reading its first hundred pages before bowing out), the lack of a story, and the one-dimensional stock characters. Don't even get me started on the absolute obsession with pairing up every good (meaning: chaste) and mature-enough woman for marriage to a handsome man with money.
For her supposed feminist works, Jane Austen was still a product of her time. No matter how much her heroines are opinionated, their opinions don't matter in the end, and their lives will always revolve around men, men's approval, men's economic privileges and security, and marriage. And boring walks in the country, balls, and sitting for tea and talking: particularly about houses and other people's broken engagements. There really must have been nothing else for the British middle-to-upper class to do back in the 18th-19th centuries.
Austen's novels' "wit" and social conscious criticism I barely registered; I just couldn't stand how plotless, overwritten, lackadaisical, and uninteresting they are, adding to the sexist double standards, the classism, the hypocrisy, the elitism, and the capitalism.
Don't get me wrong, I do respect Jane Austen. I have to. For a woman of her time to have been as well educated as she was, to have had her books published at all - never using a male pseudonym, though her authorship remained anonymous at first - and to do it as continuously as she did until the end of her life, never letting anything and anyone dissuade her, she was a hardworker to be sure, and a rebel in that sense. As Christian and conservative as she was, she never married or had children, up to her death at age forty-one, making me think that perhaps a lot of her writings contain a dose of wish fulfilment on her part. However, unintentionally or not, she seems to me to be one of the precursors to the condescending view that women only write and read romance novels; which lasted over a hundred years, and while this sexist assumption seems to have rightfully died nowadays, it still lingers in a few literary circles. Just look at YA post-'Twilight', and that series that shall not be named under threat of burning misfortune (*coughfiftyshadesofgreycough*).
Such were my thoughts on the works of one of the most prominent classic authoresses of all time. And still are, in some shadow and light. Then I received a most pleasant surprise, something of a miracle: I read 'Northanger Abbey', one of Austen's novels published posthumously, and not only did I enjoy it, I kind of love it.
I'm shocked that this is so, because it does contain some of the complaints I've voiced about her other books - no plot, barely a driving force throughout, walks in the country, carriage rides, balls, broken engagements, and marrying off deemed-worthy girls to whoever - plus 'Northanger Abbey' arguably contains less of a structure and focus than those. Northanger Abbey itself isn't even mentioned until the last one hundred pages, and it plays only a little part in the heroine's "adventures" in high society. Yet it is a simply written - a few moments of struggling aside - action-orientated, endearing, sweet, funny, relatable, and profusely charming coming of age chronicle.
Catherine Morland is adorable, and far from one-note, meek, docile, and a pushover. Despite her general naivete, a product of the advantages and disadvantages of Gothic romance novel reading (a huge merit in 'Northanger Abbey''s favour), she's assertive; she doesn't let anyone easily sway and pressure her into doing things she doesn't want to, and she sticks to her principles. She's kind, caring, and thoughtful; she changes her moods quickly; and is prone to paranoia, a overactive imagination, and self-deprecation. In other words, she's a seventeen-year-old girl.
Catherine is a fairly well-off country girl debutante who learns about the unfairness, the dishonesty, the deception, and manipulations of the people in high class families. She learns what wealth and privilege does to her new acquaintances. Society is an unnecessarily complicated game to be played for them. Like me, she resents it all, for its childishness, and pointlessness in its indirectness than anything else.
While I wouldn't go so far as to call 'Northanger Abbey' feminist, even for its time, it does feature strong and impressive elements of feminine progress. Such as Catherine sticking to her convictions and trusting her own mind most of the time; her friendship with Eleanor Tilney, who is very kind and supportive; her rejecting the brash, illiterate, egotistical, obvious arsehole John Thorpe (seriously, why is it so hard for romance, YA and NA authors to not pair the heroine up with the arsehole alpha male lead? Jane Austen had executed the not-really-impossible, and in the 1800s!); the romance being a small detail in comparison to new experiences and female companionship; and a patriarch, who appears to be nice and jolly to the heroine, turns out to be a domestic abuser and cruel gold digger only interested in riches and social standing. He's no philanthropist, to be certain.
I am a little ambivalent as concerns the treatment of Isabella Thorpe - who's suspiciously like a target for the 19th century equivalent of slut shaming - but we have all known a woman like her in any time period. A poor, pretentious social climber, and a fake friend or no; Isabella is charming, charismatic, and an unapologetic loud riot whenever she appears on the page, regardless. Similar to every female character, the reader won't forget about her anytime soon.
Emphasis is still placed on women's' prettiness for her to be seen as anything of worth in society, and on women having to kowtow to men's vanities and egos - to dumb themselves down in the process, so as to give off a cute air and glamour and to not emasculate him - even if this is for the point of satire.
So, 'Northanger Abbey' - how did you do it? Your main romance, between Catherine and Henry Tilney, while sweet, with plenty of clever banter, isn't really well developed. You're more of an account of what happens to the young and naive Catherine once she is introduced to society as a debutante, than what is termed a "novel". But the recognisable wit and satire of Gothic romances - in analysing the growth of Catherine as Austen's designated, as termed, "heroine", and the defence of novels in general - I didn't know they were once looked down on as unintelligent and tasteless - is present. There are bountiful witty and heartfelt quotes, and literary references.
'Northanger Abbey' is flawed, but delightful. Its growing pains only add to its charm. It loves and highlights books!
If there is anyone like me who feels that Jane Austen's novels are all the same, and are too wordy and accentuate punctuation over plot, I advise you to begin reading 'Northanger Abbey', and to keep going.
It is, in its subtle, simple endeavour, enchanting.
Three strikes and you're out (as was the case for me with books by E. M. Forster and Colette), but now I shall give Jane Austen another fighting chance. Next up is another novel that is universally beloved and unanimous, 'Persuasion'.
Final Score: 3.5/5
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