Feild, James in "Northanger Abbey"
Like many people, I find Northanger Abbey the least interesting of Jane Austen’s big six novels and the one that has proved most resistant to successful television and movie adaptations. Austen did not publish the novel herself—it appeared posthumously—and one wonders whether she was holding off because it didn’t live up to her high standards. Austen is noteworthy for the depth of her heroines, and Catherine Morland is in danger of being little more than a vehicle through which Austen satirizes the gothic novel.
That being said, the 2007 Masterpiece Theater version, which I watched for the first time yesterday, doesn’t do a bad job with this interesting work. The director has focused on a submerged theme in the novel and elevated it through adding dialogue that does not and could not have appeared in the Austen text.
The novel, as you probably know, is about an avid reader of Ann Radcliffe gothics. (Radcliffe was the Anne Rice, Stephen King, or J. K. Rowling of her day.) Because Catherine sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between fiction and real life, however, she commits a serious faux pas by suspecting hero Henry Tilney’s father, General Tilney, of having murdered his wife. Henry remains in love with her anyway, however, and she grows out of her adolescent love of gothics to become a responsible young woman. They marry and live happily ever after.
For a long while, scholars saw the novel as little more than a maturation drama. Feminist criticism, however, made us aware that General Tilney, while not a conventional gothic villain, nevertheless has some of the attributes of one. In Madwoman in the Attic, for instance, Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert note that the laundry list that Catherine thinks is a dark clue is indeed a dark clue—not of a woman chained in a dungeon but of women’s domestic oppression. In another wonderfully titled work, Loving with a Vengeance, Tania Modleski notes that it was women’s social powerlessness that bred the paranoia that attracted women to gothic romances. If one feels metaphorically imprisoned, then one seeks out stories of women actually imprisoned. It makes sense that Catherine would see Tilney as a gothic tyrant because he is, indeed, a tyrant.
In the Masterpiece Theater version, we have Henry Tilney explicitly talking about his father’s vampiric tendencies and telling Catherine that, although she was wrong in thinking him a murderer, her instincts were otherwise right: his father did indeed sap life out of his wife. This discussion is not to be found in the book because Austen is not this kind of overt feminist.
On another matter, Austen also doesn’t have Isabella Thorpe pulling a Lydia Bennet and actually sleeping with the older Tilney brother. But that variation worked for me as well as the vampire references. I see film adaptations of novels as theatrical interpretations of plays and am willing to allow changes as long as sufficient respect is accorded to the original text.
This is one reason why I am so critical of Patricia Rozema’s film version of Mansfield Park, which I have written about here. Rozema’s mistake is that she doesn’t think that Fanny Price is an interesting enough heroine and so makes her more of an Elizabeth Bennet figure, thereby missing out on Fanny’s depth.
Luckily, the recent version of Northanger Abbey doesn’t think that it has to correct Jane Austen. Just accentuate one of her concerns.
4 Comments
I confess, I was delighted by Northanger Abbey when I first read it (and I read The Mysteries of Udolpho first just to be responsible). I wonder if Catherine might be a more responsible character than she is often thought to be right from the start. Given her rather sheltered upbringing and her thoroughly sensible, unimaginative parents, Catherine doesn’t read very well, it is true–her understanding of the literature she has read (given the quotes early on in the novel) is shallow; even by the end of the book, irony is not something she understands.
Still, when confronted by a real tyrant, she sees him for what he is and is helped by Ann Radcliffe. She isn’t very fluent in the practice of “living by literature” and so messes up a bit. But when she is put into a real-life gothic situation–the dawn carriage ride home, 75 miles away, with no provisions, and all alone–she neither romanticizes it nor falls into a swoon. She very sensibly makes her way home as best she can.
Mostly, though, I am moved to comment on this post because I’m pleased to read about Northanger Abbey on one of my favorite blogs.
What did you think of Radcliffe, Kristina? I once assigned the entire Udolpho to a class and learned my lesson when my students rebelled at its length. Now I just give excerpts.
One critic I read commented on the fact that Radcliffe heroines are always being kidnapped and, when they are, they get to see fabulous sights (like the moon shining on Alpine evergreens). And that the works thereby capture simultaneously the longings and the sense of being cooped up that young British women felt. It makes sense to me.
You’re right about Catherine–she knows deep down when something isn’t right (the General) and only has the language of novels to express it.
I found the Radcliffe book very entertaining. Absolutely right about the poor maidens being swooped here and swooped there on a fearfully exciting gothic cruise of the sublime. I was also a lot more impressed by Emily than I expected to be–I’d started Northanger Abbey, decided I needed to read Mysteries first, and then came back to it. So I had a tiny sense of Radcliffe via Isabella. I had expected, from Isabella’s character, to find Emily completely weak and vapid and annoying. Instead, we get a heroine with actual values (she’s devoted, loyal, creative, intellectually curious, brave, hopeful, etc) thrown into what would certainly be a terrible situation. The Radcliffe novel made Austen’s even more entertaining (especially the first few pages) and it also helped me to see it as a little more substantial than I might otherwise have done.
That said, I couldn’t bear to read all of Emily’s poetry
I have to say I did find the first part of Udolpho difficult to read. I found Emily and her father (and their many, many tears) both irritating and distressing. (I suppose I was already (di)stressed by needing to read Udolpho as well as The Italian in only a few days.) However, I recall that the second part made a better impression. She goes with the flow, making the best of her powerless situation.
I love Catherine, though. I totally agree with both of your readings of her character. I’d like to add that she also has a very strong sense of character. She firmly wants to do right. However, people and gothic novels often lead her in the wrong direction or not at all! Her guardians in Bath are often no help, either not present or only worrying about muslins. The Thorpes and her brother lie to her t0 make her break an afternoon engagment with the Tilneys and go out with them instead. However, when she has a second engagement with the Tilneys, after their first trick, she refuses to go with them in order to keep her word to the Tilneys.
Even Henry guides her wrongly. I think Gilbert and Gubar also discuss this in their book. His storytelling as they travel to Northanger sets Catherine off on the wrong foot. She is innocent and guillable, and as you said, only an amateur at living by literature: of course she would get carried away when he sets the scene in such a dark, mysterious, and exciting way. But she puts it to rights when she realizes her mistake.