Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey is easily my favourite of the five Jane Austen novels I have read so far this year. From what I have heard about Emma, I think it may well turn out to be my favourite of the whole challenge! A considerably shorter work than some of the others, there isn't the space for lengthy diversions so I appreciated Austen's maintaining a good narrative pace throughout. I could empathise with ill-at-ease Catherine and really began to root for her once she started standing up to the selfish Thorpes.

What I now recognise as Austen trademarks are all present and correct! Much of the action happens in Bath society. The older female character, in this case the airheaded Mrs Allen, provides much of the humour, and no attachment can be assumed to be secured until the church bells have rung. I loved the additional excursion into Gothic darkness and Catherine's first night at Northanger Abbey is wonderfully atmospheric. I felt Austen spoke directly to her readers more in this book than in the others. Apparently this was the first she completed although one of the last to actually see publication. Perhaps a future editor discouraged the style, but I enjoyed her defense of novelists and her frequent namedropping of other authors she liked herself. I am now seriously considering the six Mrs Radcliffe novels for my 2018 challenge!

Maybe 3.5 stars. While Austen has a facility with the language, and an excellent ability to convey a convincing character, there are too many authorial issues which intrude for my tastes. I am not a fan of the author's frequent breaches of the fourth wall, though I recognize that authorial interjection was much more prevalent in previous times. I also feel that the overall novel is a bit of a mash-up, combining merely another of Austen's tales of romance and socio-economic standing with her supposed satirical take on the atmosphere-heavy Gothic novels of the period. The latter seems a bit too wedged into the former, with the titular Abbey itself not even appearing until two-thirds into the novel. Catherine's melodramatic predictions and fears may be overturned one by one by the banalities of reality in a fairly amusing manner, but it has little to do with the rest of the story, and when it runs its course it is immediately dropped. For that matter, it seems almost antithetical to Austen's earlier tangent upon novels of the day, including the famous quote “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” Catherine seems nothing but silly ... perhaps even stupid ... in her novel-infused anticipations of the Abbey, which Austen goes to great lengths to pick apart. I also do not find Henry entirely convincing as Catherine's partner (I don't feel a spoiler warner is really necessary here, since Austen novels are hardly in doubt as to their inevitable outcomes), in that he seems far too pleased to mock her at times. And of course, ultimately, I continue to be unsatisfied with Austen's perpetual focus on such a limited slice of the population, and its dances, meals, country homes, and love affairs.