Thoughts from my third decade of rereading Northanger Abbey
I reread Northanger Abbey recently. Because I’ve taught it a few times, it’s one of the Austens I’ve read the most, although it had been probably about a decade. And I was surprised that the reading experience had new things to bring me at 40 that it hadn’t at 30.
The first time I read Northanger, I was around 18-20. I’m really glad I read it at that age, because I got to be surprised by how immediate and relatable parts of it felt. I remember throwing the book down at one point because I was so angry at John and Isabella Thorpe—because I’d known people like that, and I hated being treated the way they treat Catherine.
But I’m also so glad I reread it at 40, because I got to experience how reading the Thorpe siblings feels different now—somehow defanged. And the change isn’t in the writing (obviously), the change is in me. Isabella and John are still just as sharply written and just as terrible. But they are also so easy to see through.
I’d feel kind of stupid about it, but it’s not just me who had to develop this ability—when I taught the book in my 20s and 30s, I had to guide my college-age students to see how Isabella was behaving in a way exactly opposite to her professed values. But even at that point, I’m not sure I saw how pervasive her hypocrisy is. Now it’s obvious in practically every line. And instead of wanting to scream and throw the book, at 40 I just groaned and rolled my eyes. Because now I understand that this kind of terribleness can be painful to experience, but it’s a kind of pain you get over and leave behind.
This time, my really deep anger was reserved for General Tilney. Because he is also a recognizable type of person, but I wasn’t experienced enough in the world to know him twenty years ago. Now that I and the world have both changed, I think we’ve all known or know of people like the General. But his terribleness is far more adult and pervasive. He’s the patriarchy writ large, and the pain he causes is a deeper, lasting damage—to society as a whole, but especially to his children.
Fuck that guy.
On the opposite hand, we have Henry Tilney. He was my Austen hero crush in my twenties; I fell for him because he’s a big nerd. In my thirties, I still loved him but thought he could stand to be little less pedantic. But this time, for the first time, I found myself actually thinking more about Henry’s perspective on events, and it was really amusing:
You’re Henry Tilney, a guy who’s spent most of his adulthood, ever since his mom died, trying to shield his sister from his emotionally abusive dad. The experience has made you The Funny One. You’ve never thought you’d get a lot of romantic attention. But suddenly absolutely everyone is throwing this girl at you. Not just Eleanor, who obviously thinks it’s very funny—but your dad. Your asshole dad is moving heaven and earth to set you up with this random, regular girl, and you cannot figure out why. It can’t be for your happiness, that’s not how this man rolls. And the worst part is, you actually like her. You wish you didn’t, just to spite the old man, but she’s just so (in her terms, may the English language forgive you) nice. And cute. What’s more, she’s guileless, while you’re used to a world full of guile. She’s sincere, while you’re adept at navigating insincerity. And she likes you, which you were slow to believe was real at first, but she has made it very, very obvious. Still, you’re reluctant to make a move (at least not The Big Move) because you can’t figure out what the game is here. Your dad’s game, that is, not Catherine’s game. Catherine has no game, but as soon as you figured that out, your dad swooped in. So finally, you come home, looking forward to seeing her because she just brightens up everything, even your father’s miserable house, but she’s not there. And the other shoe drops, and it all makes sense.
I don’t remember—have either of the screen adaptations of Northanger shown us the scene where Henry goes absolutely ballistic on the General? Because I could see him being very calmly, coldly furious, but I could also see him finally, after all those years of pent-up anger, just losing it. Either way, I want to see Henry tell his father that Catherine Morland is worth ten, a hundred, a thousand of General Tilney.
I got the impression on this read that Henry wasn’t even that mad when Catherine suspected his father of murder and/or wrongful imprisonment. I read him as more bemused than anything. But I was also surprised to find myself aligned against Henry Tilney in this scene.
In my twenties and thirties, I always taught Northanger as a genre study where the protagonist is wrong-genre savvy. Catherine Morland is in a comedy of manners, but she thinks she’s in a gothic novel, and this confrontation with Henry—the most genre-savvy of characters (in a way that aligns him in an interesting way with the novel’s author/narrator, via his wry observations of human behavior and his defense of the novel)—is where she finally realizes her mistake. Henry forces her to examine the actual setting and events of the novel—“Remember the country and the age in which we live”; “Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, you own observation of what is passing around you”—and place herself in the correct genre. This reality check leads to a maturation in her perspective, which leads her toward her happy ending. I think it’s a good reading, and I stand by it.
But on this reread, I was more like… Henry, are you serious? Abusive men murder their wives. Yes, even educated, English, Christian men. Yes, even in the eighteenth century, and the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first. Faking their deaths and imprisoning them for years, I’ll grant you, is less probable. But men very much do murder their wives. And the law doesn’t stop them, doesn’t punish them if they cover it up well enough, and the “neighborhood of voluntary spies” might see the abuse and look the other way until it’s too late. This isn’t just the stuff of fantastic, contrived drama, Henry. This happens. This happens regularly. You have to know that. I mean, come on. Yes, this is your dad and you know the reality of the situation, but looking at it as an outsider? Consult your own understanding, your own observation of what is passing around you. Don’t be such a willfully obtuse man.
I would like an adaptation to show Henry coming to this realization, on his own or with the help of Eleanor—because Eleanor is a woman, and she has to live with the General all the time, so I think she knows.
I mean, Catherine is a girl who takes several encounters to decide she doesn’t really like John Thorpe very much, and who makes excuses for Isabella as long as she can. This is the girl who always gives people more of the benefit of the doubt than they deserve. And she has determined within a few days that Henry’s dad is a stone-cold murderer. That should tell him something important.
I do remember that the 2007 adaptation hints in that direction when Henry tells Catherine her instinct, if not the substance of her accusation, was correct, and that there is “a kind of vampirism” in the Abbey. 2007 was during the Twilight years, which explains the vampire reference, but it’s a good metaphor for what’s happening between the General and his kids. They don’t just loathe him, they’re afraid of him. And whenever he’s around, Catherine notices, he sucks all the fun and joy out of the room.
(Instead of vampires, an adaptation today would gesture to the true crime genre, and a modern retelling should definitely make Catherine a true crime fan.)
In an adaptation, would like to see more of Henry’s maturation from his exposure to Catherine’s character. I didn’t realize it when I first read the novel and Henry was older than me, but he could stand to grow, too. Ideally, for example, people grow out of being the Language and Grammar Police, which is just another type of silliness. And this would lead us up to Henry finally growing enough to break away from his father.
(P.S. for my Tolkien friends: General Tilney/his wife = Denethor/Finduilas, Henry is Faramir, Frederick could be a suckier version of Boromir, I said what I said.)
“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?”
I read it as something like, "We are too prominent in our neighbourhood for this to go unnoticed" or "My dad wouldn't have gotten away with it." And I think it's something of a callback to Catherine marveling at how many servants there are in the Abbey, which would make committing such a crime very difficult.
But I'll admit, it's his weakest moment, though one that Catherine probably needed. I do like how much he equivocates about his father's "love" for his mother.
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