Catherine Morland's Gothic Delusions: A Defense of Northanger Abbey

Catherine Morland's Gothic Delusions: A Defense ö/Northanger Abbey WALDO S. GLOCK The critical response to Northanger Abbey has been neither consistent nor entirely unambiguous. Most critics have recognized that a problem exists, a problem connected with the success or failure with which Jane Austen has integrated into the body of Catherine Morland's ordinary adventures a substantial element of Gothic burlesque. Although it is die diird novel written by Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey was evidently less extensively revised than the early versions of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. It therefore seems to contain more of Jane Austen's early work than the two earlier novels, and certainly the prominence given to the parody of Gothic romance links Northanger Abbey to such juvenile work as Love and Freindship. Numerous critics have insisted that the burlesque is imperfectly joined to the main narrative, with the result diat Cadierine's fantastic delusions at Northanger Abbey are regarded as deficient in logical connection widi her earlier experiences at Bath. Her impressionable mind occasionally interprets scenes at Bath in the light of her reading of Gothic romance, and she succumbs to excited anticipations of viewing Blaize Castle; but—so the argument goes—none of these temporary enthusiasms quite prepares die reader for the excessive credulity with which Cadierine becomes the victim of Gothic illusion at Northanger Abbey. The alteration in her character, the seeming use of her as a satiric device, without apparent regard for the principles of consistency and convincing reality, persuade many critics to question the structural unity of the novel. Jane Austen, they imply, surely would have purged her work of such youthful extravagances had she revised Northanger Abbey as extensively as she did Pride and Préjudice. Waldo S. Glock teaches at New Mexico State University. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW33 Typical of this kind of criticism is that of Anne Ehrenpreis in her introduction to the Penguin English Library edition of the novel. The formal relationship between the "Bath episodes and the Northanger experience is not comfortable, and Catherine's adventures at Northanger are not a natural consequence of her reading." Once Catherine has arrived at the Abbey, she no longer functions as an anti-heroine, but proceeds to behave as irrationally as a "conventional Gothic prima donna, basing absurd conclusions on the slightest evidence." She becomes a different person, a prey to morbid fantasies, and "There is no way to accept this shift in Catherine's character as psychologically convincing ." * In other words, Mrs. Ehrenpreis is arguing that the bu:lesque passages, especially Chapters v-ix of Volume II, are structurally and thematically opposed to the main plot in which Jane Austen depicts a young lady's entrance into the world. The Evelina theme is interrupted, and the aesthetic unity of the whole seriously damaged, by the author's playful insistence that Catherine is, in spite of the evidence of her unheroic nature, a romantic heroine after all. Similar critical detraction is widespread, and emphasizes the large number of readers who experience a sense of discomfort, even of dismay, at the apparent "breach in the imaginative continuity of Northanger Abbey." 2 Catherine's deliberate pursuit of her Gothic illusions, according to McKillop, "jolts the story rather violently," connecting Northanger Abbey with Jane Austen's earlier efforts at crude burlesque. To Mary Lascelles the burlesque pattern is "not subtly interwoven with the rest of the fabric," largely because the relationship is tenuous between "Catherine's fancied and her actual adventures at the climax of the story." 3 General Tilney's cruel dismissal, in other words, is neither caused by nor related to her extravagant misconception of him. The problem of unity, then, raises certain questions about the rela- 'Janc Austen, Northanger Abbey (Harmonclsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1972), pp. 13 and 16. Alan D. McKillop, "Critical Realism in Northanger Abbey," in fane Austin: A Collection of Critical Essays, cd. Ian Watt (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: I'rentice-Hall, 1963), p. 60. 3 Mary Lascdlcs, fane Austen and Her Art (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), pp. 59 and 64. 34A DEFENSE OF NORTHANGER ABBEY tion of part to part, and of theme to aesthetic intention, that suggest the impropriety of applying...