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Anais do XIV Seminário Nacional Mulher e Literatura / V Seminário Internacional Mulher e Literatura

‘IT IS ONLY A NOVEL!’: WOMEN AND NOVEL-READING IN JANE AUSTEN’S NORTHANGER ABBEY

Berttoni Cláudio Licarião1

Smiles, sitting-rooms and readership

It is fairly expected to find one smiling when reading any of Jane Austen’s novels. This immediate response, rather than the product of contemptuous acceptance of the frivolous, is provoked by a certain sense of impunity, of delicious youthfulness, of subtle irony and feminine wit, which pervades all her work. As one walks with her characters, dances with them, lays together in drawing-rooms or peruses letters of ill-favored news, one gradually, if not immediately, grows fond of them and becomes a faithful companion to their fortunes.

Yet, criticism has not always been supportive of that opinion. Part of nineteenth century critics was rather harsh towards Austen, charging the author of having too restricted a world, her representation of reality being too narrowed to the sitting-rooms of the English genteel society. Indeed, her writings were concerned with the daily preoccupations of the female world: the importance of family, the necessity of marriage and the maintenance of social intercourse are some of her major motifs. Nevertheless, according to Azerêdo:

The room is a metonym for the author’s worries about the domestic universe—not only concerning visits, dances, games, talks and meetings—but also regarding the relationships between people that either inhabit or attend the house; conflicting relations, most of them, involving matters of power, authority and submission, especially respecting women2.

1 Graduated in Letras from Universidade Federal da Paraíba and Master degree student (granted a scholarship by CNPq) in POSLIT program from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.2 AZERÊDO, Genilda. Jane Austen, adaptação e ironia: uma introdução. João Pessoa: Ed. Manufatura, 2003. p.22. The translation to English is mine.


In view of that, what some of those critics seem to have failed to acknowledge was that, although restricted to bedchambers and parlors, there is some universal tension that breaks through every novel, and dialogues with the conventions, understandings and beliefs of readers of different times and places. The unspoken stand that most of Romantic period writers assumed towards Austen was due, mainly, to the antithesis between sensibility and sense, i.e., heart and brains. Those who advocate the former were likely to consider her works mere copies of life, thus unworthy of further considerations; whereas the defendants of the latter were impressed by her wit and exquisite analytical intelligence concerning her themes. On this matter, Ian Watt suggested that:

The Romantic movement and its Victorian aftermath was in general unlikely to be favorable to Jane Austen’s classical sense of order and control. All the Romantics were seeking in some way to transcend the limitations of actuality, to go beyond the bounds of society, reason, and individual experience, whether through political reform, through the imagination, or through spiritual self-exploration3. (p.3)

Moreover, Jane Austen’s mastered genre, the novel, was still fighting for a respectful position in the literary canon during the second half of the eighteenth century. The growth of readership, related to the spread of reading habits among the lower and middle classes of this period, was one of the main reasons for the popularization of the novel. The new genre supplied those new readers with a transient satisfaction that a reading for pleasure was expected to provide. Besides, differently from medieval high romance and the ballad, which belonged respectively to the aristocracy and the folk, the novel “was more distinctly the outcome of middle-class values and outlook, not only in its characteristic content but in its characteristics as a composition.”4 Hence, associated with the political, social and economic rise of the middle class, in the end of eighteenth and beginning of the

3 WATT, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957. p.34 GILLIE, Christopher. A Preface to Jane Austen. London: Longman, 1974. p.59


nineteenth century the novel had “the greatest vital potentiality of all literary forms”5. And still according to Gillie, Jane Austen was probably the first novelist to distinguish it and explore the amplitude of this genre up to its own limitations.

Women and fiction

During the last fifteen years of the 18th century, Englishmen suddenly sensed, as never before or since, that they lived amidst profound changes. The Industrial Revolution had by this time sent its reverberations into the quietest villages of the countryside. The once prevailing self-sufficiency of the individual farmstead was forever broken, and everyone depended to some degree upon manufacturing.

For that reason, men and women could dispose of much more leisure time than before, especially the latter: once there was no need of baking the bread, brewing the beer, fabricating soap and candles, spinning and weaving, for all of those products could be found at local shops, they became readers. Some other reasons for that are pointed out by Watt:

Women of the upper and middle classes could partake in few of the activities of their menfolk, whether of business or pleasure. It was not usual for them to engage in politics, business, or the administration of their estates, while the main masculine leisure pursuits such as hunting and drinking were also barred. Such women, therefore, had a great deal of leisure, and this leisure was often occupied by omnivorous reading. 6

But what kind of book would suit such an audience? Epics, tragedies, histories and poetry were “superseded genres of archaic, militaristic cultures”7 and therefore unsuitable for the typically domesticated audience

5 Ibidem.6 WATT, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957. p.417 UTLER, Marilyn. Introduction to Northanger Abbey. In: Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey. London: Penguin Books, 2003. p.xix


of modern readership. Women would prefer “historical novels, centred on people, to the history of external events, and domestic drama, based on the passions generated by personal relationships, to high tragedy or epic”8. Thus, novel-reading became an essentially feminine form of entertainment. Shortly after, as a result of wider educational opportunities, the adequacy of the genre to the reader’s own experience, the increase of their leisure time, and eventually, the necessity of imposing themselves as consistent and skillful writers, women began to produce novels.

On discussing women and the fiction written by them, Virginia Woolf stated that “Fiction was, as fiction still is, the easiest thing for a woman to write.”9 The reasons given by the author of Mrs. Dalloway are the following: first, because novels are a less concentrated form of art, which implies that it can be started or left aside according to the demands of housekeeping routine and social obligations; second and most important, by “living as she did in the common sitting-room, surrounded by people, a woman was trained to use her mind in observation and upon the analysis of character. She was trained to be a novelist and not to be a poet.”10 During the 1800s, as they were forcibly withheld in a middle-class drawing-room, and deprived of a larger range of experiences, women’s writings were unsurprisingly confined to their dwelling spaces and oftentimes resented the treatment of their sex and pleaded for their rights.

Aware of the social deprivations of women in her time, that were considered intellectually inferiors to men by many, Jane Austen created innovative pieces of work, quizzically intellectual and refreshed by the naturalness of her women. Her wit, irony and style reveal the effort of finding her own vernacular, a sentence organisation that “takes the natural shape of her thought without crushing or distorting it”11. The predicaments of her heroines entangle the trivial and insignificant, by making them of utter importance. According to Gillie “the Jane Austen heroine has to live from her

8 Ibidem.9 WOOLF, Virginia. Women and fiction. IN: HALE, Dorothy J. The Novel: an anthology of criticism and theory, 1900-2000. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. p.58110 bidem.11 dem, p.583


personal resources in a space which has confined them and offers her little scope: yet happiness and fulfillment are achieved. The art of the novels lies in showing how they are achieved against the weight of improbability”.12

In Northanger Abbey, fiction is the very subject matter of the novel: there are frequent references to the genre conventions and oftentimes the author seems eager to defend her art. How does Austen do so is what we are to look upon now, focusing on the narrator’s intervention in Volume 1, chapter 5.

Northanger Abbey: a playful defense

Of all Jane Austen’s novels, Northanger Abbey is presumably the one who most relies on the reader’s previous readings. To understand it thoroughly one has to bear in mind the discussions that were taking place during the time of its composition and the literature that preceded it, especially the ones influenced by the Gothic sub-genre. As Marilyn Butler suggests, in her introduction to the novel: “By pooling the contemporary novel’s sub-genres together to make her own continuous plot, Austen draws attention to a family similarity and a common stock of motifs found widely dispersed in time.”13 Ultimately, indeed, Northanger Abbey depends for its own interest, suspense and colour on being itself a romance.

In this romance, Catherine Morland, the main character, is a plain eighteen years-old girl with a disposition rather improbable of becoming a heroine. She is described as having “a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features; (…) and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind”. (I, 1) All first chapter suggests that the destiny of such an ordinary character one is to follow has a doubled path, which ought to be simultaneously trodden by the reader: the first covers the story of Catherine’s rite of passage to adulthood, which she will undertake; the second encompasses the exploration of the possibilities of novel-reading, by means of breaking the conventions of novelistic writing.

12 GILLIE, Christopher. A Preface to Jane Austen. London: Longman, 1974. p.9713 UTLER, Marilyn. Introduction to Northanger Abbey. In: Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey. London: Penguin Books, 2003. p.xxiv


In the second sense, the opening lines of the novel reveal Austen’s satire of novelistic formulas, as follow: “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine” (I, 1). As the novel resumes, a bright pact is established between the author and her readers, as she continues to speak directly to her audience, reminding them of each novel convention as they are broken, ignored or put into use. For instance, as the party sets their journey to Bath, Austen’s description of the trip is constructed as a burlesque version of what should be expected from a Gothic heroine’s distress: “It was performed with suitable quietness and uneventful safety. Neither robbers nor tempests befriended them, nor one lucky overturn to introduce them to the hero.” (I, 2) Then, in her account of Mrs. Allen—another instance of the author addressing her readers—, the irony functions as to mark the differences of the parody and the parodied texts:

It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs. Allen, that the reader may be able to judge, in what manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the general distress of the work, and how she will, probably, contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the desperate wretchedness of which a last volume is capable—whether by her imprudence, vulgarity, or jealousy—whether by intercepting her letters, ruining her character, or turning her out of doors.14

As Linda Hutcheon points out in her Theory of Parody, the parody exists, essentially, when it marks a difference, not a similarity to the parodied text. The many conventions implied in this passage, such as the length of the novel and the predicaments of the heroine’s misery, were ironically inverted by Austen as a way of spotting the parody. This was probably expected to provoke, in the eighteenth century reader, utter amusement and serious reflection. The necessity of well-informed readers, connoisseurs of the works of Samuel Richardson [1689-1761] or Ann Radcliffe [1764-1823], just to name a few of the referred authors throughout the novel, is thus of great importance, for otherwise the parody would be neutralized.

14 AUSTEN, Jane. Northanger Abbey. London: Penguin Books, 2003. pp.20-21


Parody, according to Hutcheon, is utterly dependant of considering “the parodic text’s entire situation in the world—the time and the place, the ideological frame of reference, the personal as well as the social context”15. For that reason, parody “is intensely context- and discourse-dependent.”16 Having that in mind, associated to all that has been discussed above, on the situation of women and the rise of novel, how can one situate Jane Austen’s novel in the cultural milieu of the beginning of nineteenth century? It seems that the defense of her genre in I, 5 of Northanger Abbey has an acceptable answer to that question.

This short chapter is a summary of how the relationship between Catherine and Isabella Thorpe quickly increased into the warmest affection; and how books played an important role in their friendship. Not any kind of books, of course, but novels:

Yes, novels;—for 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. (I, 5)

Austen’s main target here is obviously the silly novel writers and readers of her time. She was probably aware of Samuel Johnson’s celebrated defense of the novel published around 1750, in which he praises “the manner of the Richardson and his followers (...) for their accurate observation of character, naturalistic mixing of virtues and weaknesses, and moral, educative intention.”17 Nevertheless, he condemns the ignorant novel-readers and the set of works, which Austen’s novels inevitably became

15 HUTCHEON, Linda. A Theory of Parody. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. p.xiii16 Ibidem.17 BUTLER, Marilyn. Introduction to Northanger Abbey. In: Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey. London: Penguin Books, 2003.p.xvii


part of. These novels are written, according to Johnson (1750),

Chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introductions into life. They are the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by principles, and therefore easily following the current fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account18.

It is rather easy to presume that Catherine Morland will be precisely the kind of reader Johnson is describing; and, naturally, the kind of character Austen needs to proceed in her defense. By choosing such protagonist for her novel, it seems that Austen is assuming her work to be the very epitome of what was wrong with fiction, and she employs herself in proving that assumption wrong, resuming her speech with eloquent conviction:

Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. (…) There seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labor of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit and taste to recommend them. (I,5)

As the voice of an ‘injured body’ (I, 5), she points out the intrinsic values of novel-reading while remarking the frequent injustice done towards the writers of the genre. Why should the heroine of one novel patronise another? Novelists must stick together. Finally, in the final lines of her discourse, Austen provides us with a fine definition of her art, as “a 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

18 Available at http://www.virtualsalt.com/lit/rambler4.htm . Accessed on July, 30th 2011.

http://www.virtualsalt.com/lit/rambler4.htm


in the best chosen language” (I,5). Thus, the apology is completed, joyfully resented but impressively accomplished.

Final remarks

Within Jane Austen’ oeuvre Northanger Abbey stands as a key cross-reference to current claims for women’s place in culture as both readers and creators of genres of their own. By relying on her readers’ capacity of recognizing her work as a parody, and inviting them to complete the novel together with her, adding their own impressions and readings, Austen not only defended this feminine genre as a legitimated form of art but also guaranteed women’s place in the competent readership of early nineteenth century.

This paper tried to analyse the function of parody in the establishment of such competence, through an historical-cultural examination of the novel’s context and the role of women in the time Northanger Abbey was first published (which happened posthumously in 1817). It neither comprehended the whole scope of the novel, nor exhausted the many instances on the use of the parody and its reliance on readership. It only provided a small contribution—let us hope—for the debate of the reader’s importance in the accomplishment of a literary piece, and on how, by means of exploring such device, an author can engender a change in his/her social context. To answer thoroughly the implications of such connection, further studies must be employed, whether to explain how Austenian parody behaves in the eyes of beholders of different epochs or simply to answer what magical force keeps us smiling face any of Jane Austen’s works.


References

AUSTEN, Jane. Northanger Abbey. London: Penguin Books, 2003.

AZERÊDO, Genilda. Jane Austen, adaptação e ironia: uma introdução. João Pessoa: Ed. Manufatura, 2003.

BUTLER, Marilyn. Introduction to Northanger Abbey. In: Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey. London: Penguin Books, 2003.

DAY, Martin S. History of English Literature 1660-1837. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963.

HUTCHEON, Linda. A Theory of Parody. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

JOHNSON, Samuel. The Rambler (March 1750—March 1752), no.4. Disponível em: <http://www.virtualsalt.com/lit/rambler4.htm> . Acesso em 30 de Julho de 2011.

GILLIE, Christopher. A Preface to Jane Austen. London: Longman, 1974.

MCKILLOP, Alan D. Critical Realism in Northanger Abbey. In: Ian Watt (ed). Jane Austen : A Collection of Critical Essays. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Inc. pp52-61.

WATT, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957.

WOOLF, Virginia. Women and fiction. In: HALE, Dorothy J. The Novel: an anthology of

criticism and theory, 1900-2000. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

http://www.virtualsalt.com/lit/rambler4.htm

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