Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

This past month I've been alterating between classics and more contemporary fiction and what ever the genre all my reads have been great ones! All in all I feel that I've been really lucky with the books I've read this year. There have been only one I did not really like and then there is another one that I started and have not been in the mood for going back to (I will get to it eventually, however, as the novel itself is good, I just need to be in the appropriate mood for it). The funny thing is that since January I've made good progress with books that have sat in my bookselves for a long time and I can only wonder why have I not read them earlier???

One of those books is Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I count Austen among my all time favorite authors, but somehow I had always stayed away from Northanger Abbey. Maybe partly because I remember seeing a rather awful TV version of the story once. All I remember of the film is that there was lots of running around in dark corridors and gloomy gardens! It gave me the impression that Northanger Abbey was all gothic and nothing else and even though I love a good gothic novel as much as anyone, I had always tought that Northanger Abbey sounded too different from Austen's other novels to really interest me. Oh boy, was I (once again) proved wrong!

Northanger Abbey tells about 17-year old Catherine Morland, who gets the opportunity to go to Bath and experience the fashionable society for the first time. In Bath she befriends Isabella, a flirtatious young woman a few years her senior, who introduces Catherine to gothic romances. Catherine also meets siblings Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who later invite her to visit their home, Northanger Abbey. Catherine's knowledge of abbeys is based largely on the gothic novels she's been reading and soon her imagination runs wild.

Northanger Abbey was first of Austen's books to be completed for publication. She wrote it during the last years of the 18th century and sold it for a publisher (who ended up never publishing it) in 1803. Only in 1815 Austen bought the manuscript back from the publisher and next year she was working with the text of the novel. However, at that point Jane Austen's health was in decline. She suffered from a kidney disease and died in July 1817. Northanger Abbey was published posthumously in December 1817 (in the first edition the year is given as 1818).

Northanger Abbey reads almost as two separate novellas. Larger part of the story plays out in Bath and through Austen's writing one gets a lively picture of the Bath society. Second part of the novel takes place in Northanger Abbey and includes some gothic elements. I must say that even tough I really liked the book I loved the first part and sometimes felt a bit frustrated with the heroine in the second one! On the other hand Austen depicts the naivete of a 17-year-old girl, a girl with quite a wild imagination, just perfectly!

Northanger Abbey is the most bookish of Austen's novels. It is a nice defence of novels and novel reading written in a time when novel reading was seen as something inferior. Late 18th century novelists are discussed freguently. Charlotte starts reading The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe and later her new friend Isabella gives her a list of other gothic novels she should read. Udolpho is mentioned frequently throughout the book. I actually have it & even though it might have been even better to read it before I read Northanger Abbey, it would still be interesting to read it now that Northanger Abbey is still fresh in my memory. Earlier today I also downloaded two novels by Fanny Burney, namely Camilla and Cecilia, both of which are also mentioned in Northanger Abbey. :)

What can I say? I love my Austen. :) And Charlotte Morland may even have become my second favorite Austen heroine right after Elizabeth Bennet. The love story in Northanger Abbey is not in the scale of, say, Pride and Prejudice. I have cried more than once over Mr. Darcy saying: "My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever" and Elizabeth answering that she has changed her mind about Darcy completely. No tears were shed while I read Northanger Abbey. The romance felt almost secondary, but it was okay. What mattered most to me was the likability of the main characters and the brilliancy of Austen as a writer writing about society and manners. She was one of a kind! How lucky we are that still some 200 years later we are able to immerse ousrelves in these stories, these novels, and feel joy and sadness, be scared or delighted with Catherine and Henry and Eleanor, just like generation after generation of readers have done before us!

I read Northanger Abbey for the Back to the Classics 2012 Challenge.