Classic by a Woman.
I was going to read Persuasion for
this category, but decided to hold off. I want to put off having read all six of
Jane Austen’s novels. Like a kid doesn’t want to open the last present under
the tree because once done, Christmas will be over. I tell myself not to be
silly, re-reading always offers pleasures. I remain irrationally resentful about
knowing what’s going to happen, something Austen would not like. She believed
in reason, not illogical procrastination, based on anxiety about what cannot be
helped. I completely get why certain readers are crazy – literally, zealous and
crazy - about Jane Austen though she
herself would have rolled her eyes about such unbridled enthusiasm.
Northanger Abbey
- Jane Austen
I approached this one with trepidation. I assumed a
first-novel wouldn’t be as sparkling as Pride and
Prejudice, as shrewd as Sense
and Sensibility, as thoughtful as Emma,
or as profound as Mansfield
Park.
But I was wrong to be concerned this novel might be
light-weight. A 17-year-old travels and by having adventures she grows. She
learns that the people who prattle about propriety and civility are the ones
that likely have the ethics of alley cats. She learns that being socially agreeable is
one thing, but surrendering your values to get along with others won’t do. She
learns it’s okay to feel ashamed of your irrationalities and silly assumptions,
but you need to move on without fussing. Austen thinks living a flourishing
life is important and identifying our own values helps us deal with troubles,
without which we would become slack, lazy, soft, and fragile.
I was also concerned about liking this novel because I had
heard it was a parody of gothic novels, a genre in which I’m not deeply read (only Uncle Silas comes to mind). I
was afraid of not recognizing the “had she but knownisms” that were being burlesqued.
In fact, I realized we all know gothic conventions even
if we’ve never read Walpole’s The Castle
of Otranto. Austen includes these touchstones as familiar to us as orange
and black for Halloween: set in a remote castle or country house or abbey; the
damsel in distress; old papers in hidden desk drawers; a male under the burden of
stress or guilt or a secret; and that old stand-by, stormy weather.
I think this message of this novel is to keep reading
novels. Austen subverts the gothic conventions to encourage the reader to come
off it and get real, get something more substantial out of reading than mere
surprise, wonder, fear, and foreboding. She has her characters use the word
“amazement” and “amazingly” to show what noodles they are, reading novels just
to get sensational feelings.
She lived at a time when many otherwise smart people
thought novels were trash. She had to advocate for novel reading to prove
novels could be works of art, worthy of serious-minded attention. She has our
hero say, “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good
novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
Austen wasn’t a Victorian – she used the vigorous blunt
language of Fielding
and Smollet
– and she means novel-haters are choosing to be stupid, arrogantly assuming
they already have a real good bead on life. The powerful and influential have got everything covered - just look at the world they made.
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