Jane Austen (RLE Jane Austen)

The Six Novels

Wendy Craik

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136698118
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: Literature

First published in 1965, this reissuedwork by Wendy Craik provides a thorough and extensive study of Jane Austen's six complete novels: Northanger Abbey, Senseand Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. This is a truly groundbreaking study of Austen which, in addition to a close analysis of the novels themselves, alsogoes on investigatethe principles by which Jane Austen selected and arrangedher material.

1 · Northanger Abbey

JANE AUSTEN DID NOT consider the novel we know as Northanger Abbey to be fit for publication.¹ had bought it back in 1816 from the publisher to whom — as Susan — it had been sold thirteen years before, she attempted some revision, but put it, shortly before she died, ‘upon the shelve for the present’.² One is glad it was brought down again, for besides being an accomplished burlesque of a literary fashion, it contains much of Jane Austen’ characteristic strength.

Northanger Abbey is more dated than any other of Jane Austen’ major works and less immediately popular. Because it is short, it depends considerably on the reader to fill in the standards of conduct and social behaviour of Regency Bath and well-to-do rural society around its heroine, standards from which she and so many of the people she meets are different kinds of aberration. The aberrations in this novel — the Thorpe family for example and Captain Tilney — are preposterous and grotesque; they cannot, as Miss Bingley, Lady Catherine, and Mary Crawford, and even Mrs Jennings do, show proper conduct precisely by their violations of it. However, Northanger Abbey is dated mainly because it is a literary burlesque, and few people now have even read the works of Mrs Radcliffe and her followers, and can certainly not share Catherine’ enthusiasm for them. But it is more than a burlesque of the Gothic and Sentimental Novel — which Jane Austen herself had already done superbly in Love and Friendship; it shows the same preoccupations as her other novels, and some of the same skill in presenting her conclusions. It is not wholly satisfactory, because the two intentions — of literary burlesque and of social and moral comment — come eventually into opposition during the events at Northanger. Up to this point nothing happens to Catherine that is supposed to happen to a heroine, and she does not expect it; at Northanger she begins to think herself the centre of sensational events, and is then disillusioned by Henry Tilney; then when the General turns her out we find she was right to suspect him of misconduct, even if not of wife-murder; so although the Gothic conventions are logically used, the moral effect of Henry’ reproving her fanciful suspicions of his father is undermined, and the burlesque satire spoiled. Even so, the character of Catherine and the view of society she reveals are greatly extended, and show where Jane Austen’ interests really lie.

The handling of the Bath episodes — the part most literary in impulse and most entertaining — is precise, economical, and excellently contrived, but more elementary than in the other novels. Catherine, uncomplicated as she must be for the purpose of the burlesque, is not a heroine like Emma or even Elinor, who can reveal the theme and its progress by what she does and thinks. The author’ own voice must direct the reader. Jane Austen’ method is both simple and flexible, as the opening makes clear:

She was fond of all boys’ plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rosebush. (13)

She advances a romantic convention of the novel, contradicts it, and reinforces the contradiction with facts. The reader will be alert later when the ironic contrast rests in an odd word:

Neither robbers nor tempests befriended them, nor one lucky overturn to introduce them to the hero. (19: my italics.)

This is neat, simple, and funny, and when once done defmitely, can become even less obtrusive and the reader will still respond:

It is indeed a street of so impertinent a nature, so unfortunately connected with the great London and Oxford roads, and the principal inn of the city, that a day never passes in which parties of ladies, however important their business, whether in quest of pastry, millinery, or even (as in the present case) of young men, are not detained on one side or other by carriages, horsemen, or carts. (44)

The transposed epithets ‘impertinent’ and ‘important’ (in the manner of her early burlesques) make the point as wittily and unobtrusively as anything in the best of her work.

When the scene changes to Northanger, Jane Austen’ attitude changes and her methods with it. The action is more within Catherine herself in the kind of reported throught-process which is the triumph of Emma and will be dealt with there in more detail. Catherine’ reactions to Isabella’ letter are an example:

Such a strain of shallow artifice could not impose even upon Catherine. Its inconsistencies, contradictions, and falsehood, struck her from the very first. She was ashamed of Isabella, and ashamed of having ever loved her. Her professions of attachment were now as disgusting as her excuses were empty, and her demands impudent. ‘Write to James on her behalf! — No, James should never hear Isabella’ name mentioned by her again.’ (218)

This shows the truth about Isabella, and Catherine’ naïve grasp of it, at one and the same time. The literary burlesque is now incidental, not integral:

She trembled a little at the idea of any one’ approaching so cautiously; but resolving not to be again overcome by trivial appearances of alarm, or misled by a raised imagination, she stepped quietly forward, and opened the door. Eleanor, and only Eleanor, stood there. (223)

One is too interested in why Eleanor has come so late at night to care for hints of horrors. From here to the end Jane Austen devotes herself to settling Catherine and Henry, the literary parody, the real motive of the book, having been settled in twenty-four of the novel’ thirty-one chapters.

Jane Austen shows herself unwilling to take on much personality as a narrator¹ and throws a large part of her function as arbiter of good sense on to Henry Tilney, not to his advantage (as I shall show later). This he is both at Bath and Northanger. His mocking conversations with Catherine are a judgement on Isabella (although he never appears with her) and his opinions on muslin reveal Mrs Allen. When at Northanger, the load becomes artistically more than he can bear; Catherine’ naïveté does not permit her to work out her own disillusionment like Emma, and circumstances cannot do it for her as they do for Marianne; Henry does it, and his ready instruction, and analysis of her conduct and motives, give him more importance than the plot merits, and, while making him more interesting, make him an improbable lover. Although Henry Tilney’ opinion often stands for Jane Austen’, the action is never seen through his personality (as it occasionally is through Mr Knightley’ or Edmund Bertram’) and Catherine herself is not acute enough to allow the action to be seen through hers. Jane Austen therefore remains detached from Catherine, who always seems younger and less experienced than her creator and her reader.¹ She should seem so, for a burlesque, and Jane Austen makes Catherine an excellent heroine for the events at Bath, immature and ignorant, and also naturally right-thinking and unconsciously perceptive. Jane Austen’ atti-tide changes (as it must) at Northanger, and the shift from burlesque to questions of morals and society, though not a complete success, shows her skill in presenting her material. When Catherine sees Gothic horror around her the narrative interest lies in her mental processes and misapprehensions and the exclamatory method exposes Catherine to ridicule:

The manuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning’ prediction, how was it to be accounted for? — What could it contain? — to whom could it relate? — by what means could it have been so long concealed? — and how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! (170)

After she realizes her errors, the same method can easily be used to reveal her further, and to throw the same unconsciously ironic light on to persons and events around her as is found in the other novels.

Jane Austen’ unique and excellent characters are always admired; she is one of the few English novelists who, while psychologically accurate with most of her women and many of her men, is just as happy with serious as with comic characters, and able to present both kinds in the same scene without incongruity. Emma is superior in this way to anything of Dickens’ or even Thackeray’ (and he is much nearer to her in aims and method) : nothing like the incongruity of Captain Cuttle meeting Mr Carker in Dombey and Son,or the Dobbin of the opening chapters of Vanity Fair marrying Amelia, is felt when Emma is in company with Mrs Elton — who is quite as farcical as Captain Cuttle and Dobbin; novelists who do connect all their characters and have more in common with Jane Austen, like George Eliot and Henry James, never venture so near to farce. The reason for and the result of such combinations of characters is her excellent organization. Characters of serious interest to both author and reader are treated (with certain reservations in the cases of Fanny Price and Anne Elliot) with humour and irony; while comic characters, however much they may exhibit their idiosyncrasy, have always a serious and essential purpose not merely to the plot but to the emotional, social, and moral preoccupations underlying all Jane Austen’ major work. This is bound to form a large part of the discussion of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park,and Emma,where the action is so dependent on personality, but it is also true of Northanger Abbey and shows the true bent of her genius, despite a plot contrived to travesty Mrs Radcliffe, which to a great extent dictates the characters.

The exception is Isabella Thorpe, who is far more elementary than any of the other creations outside the minor works, and is exhibited as a foil to Catherine, rather than really used in the many ways Jane Austen even here (in Mrs Allen) shows she can use such a character. Although Isabella is a success in her way, she is a product of the literary burlesque alone: she introduces Catherine to the Gothic novels by which Catherine misinterprets events at Northanger; she personifies the follies and insincerities of literary sentimentality; and, as a foil to the untutored and natural Catherine, she shows the vulgarity of mind and speech that may easily accompany such traits:

‘… I would not dance with him, unless he would allow Miss Andrews to be as beautiful as an angel. The men think us incapable of real friendship you know, and I am determined to shew them the difference. Now, if I were to hear any body speak slightingly of you, I should fire up in a moment:… you have so much animation, which is exactly what Miss Andrews wants, for I must confess there is something amazingly insipid about her.’ (40–41)

When her burlesque purpose is fulfilled Isabella leaves the story; this, and the fact that once Captain Tilney has been seen flirting with her he is scarcely seen with his family and never seen talking to them, show both Jane Austen’ awareness of her immature technique and her skill in rendering it unobtrusive. Isabella, though literary not realistic in both origin and function, is like Henry Tilney in being the result of a naïve heroine (she would be impossible, for instance, as confidante to an acute heroine like Elizabeth Bennet); that she considers herself the stuff of heroines and Catherine merely her confidante is a delightful instance of Jane Austen’ ironic economy with her material.

There are many signs even in Isabella of Jane Austen’ powers of organization. Isabella’ love of money is pertinent when she becomes engaged to James Morland, and it points to more serious topics:

‘I cannot bear to be the means of injuring my dear Morland, making him sit down upon an income hardly enough to find one in the common necessaries of life. For myself, it is nothing; I never think of myself.’ (136)

The repetition and exaggeration make it clear that she thinks of no one but herself; and she contrasts with what it is plain will eventually be the unworldly Catherine’ similar situation with Henry Tilney. Isabella shows also another important theme of the novel: Catherine’ realizing that she can and must make social and moral judgements. Isabella’ preposterous exaggerations show that Catherine’ minor ones result from innocent thoughtlessness, not from artifice, and show Catherine’ naturally sound and proper principles by contrast with her own flexibility. Her last appearance — her letter to Northanger already mentioned — gives the evidence we need that Catherine’ perceptions have sharpened and matured. At points Isabella serves both the burlesque and the moral theme at once:

… I suppose Mrs Morland objects to novels.’

‘No, she does not. She very often reads Sir Charles Grandison herself; but new books do not fall in our way.’

‘Sir Charles Grandison! That is an amazing horrid book, is it not? — I remember Miss Andrews could not get through the first volume.’ (41–42)

This shows her own silliness, the unromantic sense of Mrs Morland, and Catherine’ own sense, especially when a few lines later Catherine gives as her opinion of the novel, ‘I think it is very entertaining.’

In the same style as Isabella are her sisters Anne and Maria, who although exaggerated and unrealistic, with no part in the action, show that Isabella is in her way acute; for though Catherine trusts her,she is not taken in by her sisters. Jane Austen treats them with all the exuberant irrationality of her early work :

[Miss Thorpe] was loitering towards Edgar’ Buildings between two of the sweetest girls in the world, who had been her dear friends all the morning. (114–15)

John Thorpe makes a pair with his sister; her literary pretensions are matched by his boasts about horses, drinking, and riches. His minor exaggerations about these and his first, casual lie about being engaged to dance with Catherine prepare for his really important lies, for he twice influences Catherine’ fate by lying to General Tilney about her fortun...