You, reader, may be surprised at such a title: why would Jane Austen, one of our great novelists, need to defend the novel? Perhaps she had to defend her own works as a female writer, but novels in general? Yes, indeed she did. Novels in the 18th and early 19th centuries didn’t receive as favourable publicity as nowadays. Today reading is often seen as an intellectual hobby and writing books is a respected craft. Yet, they were rather disregarded in the Georgian Era (1714-1832). So, using her 1818 book, Northanger Abbey, Austen sought to support the validity of the novel.
A Synopsis of Northanger Abbey (for any reader who may require it)
Northanger Abbey tells the story of its heroine, 17-year-old Catherine Morland, who is fanatical about gothic novels. She travels to Bath (one of the main gatherings of high society) and meets the charming Mr Tilney. Catherine becomes intrigued by Tilney’s family seat, Northanger Abbey, which she imagines as a great gothic haven of mystery and murder. But once at the Abbey, she soon learns the repercussions of her overactive imagination.
Attitudes towards reading in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
A feminine (and dangerous) pastime
Novels were most often read by girls and women. Boys and men usually preoccupied themselves with much more “suitable” works, such as histories and science books. Some people were disturbed by the effects of reading novels. They were dramatic, uncensored and just so darn frivolous, right? Northanger Abbey plays with the potential corruption of a girl’s mind via excessive reading, with amusing results.
Books and Reading in Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey is a satirical take on the gothic genre, which is filled with thunderstorms, murder, kidnapping and melodrama. It plays with elements of the genre as well as discussing the nature of novels. In the first line of the book, we are introduced to our protagonist: ‘No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her to be born a heroine.’ Austen from the get-go uses self-awareness and references to the structure of the novel itself: its heroine, the main player of the plot.
Catherine Morland is obsessed with books, particularly those of a gothic nature, a genre filled with dramatic events and horror elements. ‘But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read…’ This obsession causes her wild imaginings— (such effects some people believed to be caused by overconsumption of such ruinous material as books.)
Other characters in the book also interact with novels. Catherine’s odious love interest John Thorpe professes he ‘never read[s] novels’, whereas Henry Tilney, a much more amiable gentleman, (and overall underrated Austen hero) gladly protests he does. He is the character who says one of Austen’s most famous quotes: ˝The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” It’s not looking good for “poor” John Thorpe…
Jane’s Defence of the Novel
While discussions of novels are scattered throughout the book, the main defence from Austen comes in Chapter V.
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. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans.’
Here Austen references the ‘ungenerous custom’ of some authors who, during the course of their own work, decry other novels while promoting their own. Samuel Richardson in Clarissa (1748), has one of his male characters speak of ‘inflaming novels’ that present ‘idle and improbable romances’ which ‘weaken’ the minds of women. Clearly, this is rather hypocritical — a novel condemning other novels. Another example of this can be found in the preface to Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801) where it states: ‘The following work is offered to the public as a Moral Tale — the author not wishing to acknowledge a novel.’
Austen also points out that heroines should enjoy reading about other heroines, meaning, women looking out for other women. This is in opposition to the ‘Reviewers’ who at the time were mainly men.
Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. 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 […] And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, […] are eulogized by a thousand pens,—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
Austen suggests that the injured body (writers) should band together. And despite the enjoyment that can be born from reading, no other type of book has been so condemned. She also criticises the praised works of other writers who were less inventive and rehashed old ideas or texts (she names poets who were long dead). When Austen was young she even wrote her own small history of England, by ‘a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian’ as she called herself. In it, she played with the pompous tone of previous historians of England. She also points out the undervalued nature of the novelist and how novels only have ‘genius, wit and taste to recommend them’, once again playing with the tone.
˝I am no novel reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel. ˝—Such is the common cant.—˝And what are you reading, Miss?˝ ˝Oh! it is only a novel!˝ replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.—˝It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda; ˝ or, in short, only some 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 humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
Austen creates a conversation that she would have heard many times: people diminishing the novel and being made to feel shame for reading them. Austen genders the speakers too, the person who is ‘no novel reader’ is a gentleman, while the reader is the lady. She suggests the book that the lady may have been reading was either Cecilia, Camilla or Belinda. These are novels by Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth, published in the 1780s and 1790s. Frances Burney (as mentioned earlier) and Maria Edgeworth both complained of other novels while promoting their own. Austen does not follow suit. She puts novels on a pedestal, pr
aising them with their mastery of human nature, wit and well-chosen language. She boldly states how the ‘greatest powers of the mind’ are displayed, countering the idea that novels were unintellectual in comparison to books on history or science. Here comes Austen’s most direct defence of the novel, and as mentioned earlier, conversations on the value of novels are peppered throughout the rest of the Northanger Abbey.
Conclusion
Jane Austen departed from the usual actions of her predecessors, disparaging other books while promoting their own. She championed the value of the novel: in intellectuality, entertainment and craft. And to the last, Austen plays with the self-aware nature of Northanger Abbey. She satirically asks the reader what the moral lesson of the book is:
‘I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.’
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Written by Jasmine Fry, 1st Year English & History. Issue 7 Pop Culture, Spring 2022.
Illustration by Jasmine Fry.
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