Reading, for me at least, has a seasonality to it. The Norwegian heaviness of Sigrid Undset and Karl Ove Knausgaard are better enjoyed in the cold and isolation of winter. The gentle hope of Tolkien befits the cool spring breeze and the new life pushing through the ground. Faulkner’s Southern works are somehow more accessible in the heat of the summer. And in the fall, surrounded as I am by the dying leaves and cooling weather, I always want to read something that helps me reflect on the end of life and the evil in the heart of man.
Oftentimes, this means reaching for works of English gothic horror. In Octobers past, I have written of my appreciation for the haunting dread of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and the confrontation with evil in Marie Belloc Lowndes’ The Lodger. I’ve never been able to put my finger on it, but English horror has a certain character that appeals to me in a way that few other nation’s works in that genre do. There is something about the simultaneous familiarity and alienness of old English estates with crazed wives in the attic that somehow evokes in me the perfect mix of fright and enjoyment.
This year, however, has been a difficult one for me. Long drawn-out health problems with treatments almost as unpleasant as my illness have weighed heavily on me, often making even routine tasks difficult. This, alongside my becoming a father of two, has greatly impacted the pace of my reading. To put it into context, there have been years in which I have read nearly a hundred books; in the past ten months, I have yet to complete two dozen.
Given my health issues, it has been difficult not to become discouraged by life. This fall, darkness is hitting me differently, and I am less inclined to immerse myself in the bleak world of straight gothic horror. But given my (albeit young) tradition of featuring such a work in this column each October, I was in a bind. Thankfully, Jane Austen came to my aid. Austen wrote a novel about a young woman obsessed with gothic novels. Though the work is more comedy of manners than horror, Northanger Abbey confronts some of the same questions posed by gothic horror, while at the same time helping readers to consider what place these works have in our imaginations and moral lives.
An inexperienced young woman
Northanger Abbey was the first novel its author ever sold to a publishing firm, but it was not released in her lifetime. For some reason, the firm decided not to publish it. After Austen became successful, she bought back the rights to the work and edited it. However, she soon passed away, and with her last work, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey was published posthumously by Austen’s brother. The work is arguably not as mature and developed as those produced at the height of the author’s powers, but it still displays her genius—perhaps in part because of her later edits.
The novel opens with a description of its protagonist, Catherine Moreland. Readers are told immediately that no one would expect Catherine to be a heroine. She is attractive but not stunning, her family is neither terrifically wealthy nor especially poor, and she lacks experience with any kind of nefarious schemes. She loves gothic novels, and her favorite is The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, a real book that was popular when Northanger Abbey was written. Catherine Moreland is, to put it bluntly, rather normal, or, as one might describe her in the contemporary vernacular, ‘basic.’ Her noteworthy attributes are that she is naïve, a voracious reader, and kindhearted.
These three characteristics are what allows this comedy of manners to function so well. The first half of the novel takes place in the city of Bath, where Catherine is visiting with family friends, while much of the second half’s action occurs at Northanger Abbey, a large gothic home that enflames the heroine’s imagination. In these two places, the innocent Catherine makes false friends and falls in love, she discovers man’s dishonesty and woman’s fickleness; in all this, Catherine is challenged to recognize that the world is, in many ways, not how she initially perceived it.
Early in the novel, Catherine makes the acquaintance of Isabella Thorpe, and the two quickly become very close. Catherine trusts all that Isabella says, and for her part Isabella, in her way, tries to explain the world to her naïve friend. However, while Catherine’s motives are generally pure (albeit at times childish), Isabella’s are a bit grayer. A naturally trusting person, Catherine suspects nothing of this; thus, when Isabella becomes romantically attached to Catherine’s brother, Catherine is overjoyed.
Catherine is far from overjoyed, however, by the presence of Isabella’s own brother, John Thorpe. John has taken a strong interest in Catherine. Like Isabella, he is a person with serious character flaws, but unlike his sister, his are apparent almost from the moment Catherine makes his introduction. He is coarse, prideful, possessive, and thoughtless, consistently acting only for his own benefit and showing little regard for anyone else. (Despite this—or perhaps because of it—his dialogue can be laugh-out-loud funny at times.) After meeting her, John wastes little time in insulting Catherine’s favorite pastime, reading novels, saying it is really fit only for women, while simultaneously showing his immense ignorance of the art form:
“Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t’other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.”
“I think you must like Udolpho, if you were to read it; it is so very interesting.”
“Not I, faith! No, if I read any, it shall be Mrs. Radcliffe’s; her novels are amusing enough; they are worth reading; some fun and nature in them.”
“Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe,” said Catherine, with some hesitation, from the fear of mortifying him.
“No, sure; was it? Aye, I remember, so it was; I was thinking of that other stupid book, written by that woman they make such a fuss about, she who married the French emigrant.”
Even the kindhearted Catherine—who habitually thinks the best of everyone—finds his company tiresome. She spends little time thinking of him, but that doesn’t stop John from developing romantic intentions for Catherine, something the young lady little suspects.
This can be forgiven, though, and for two reasons. First, Catherine is, as mentioned before, very inexperienced. Consistently throughout the book, she misses subtle social cues and fails to recognize people’s real intentions. Because of her own honest character, she assumes those she meets are speaking plainly and without hidden motivations. Though this is a real flaw that she must work to repair, it is a relatively minor one, unlike those of John and Isabella Thorpe.
The second reason why we can forgive Catherine for failing to recognize John’s intentions is quite simple: another man has caught Catherine’s eye: Henry Tilney. Introduced early in the novel, Henry and Catherine meet and dance together at a ball. During the dance, Henry shows himself to be witty and charming. Over the course of their acquaintance, though, Catherine comes to see that he is a man of real substance.
Henry is a young Anglican priest, and though his faith is not discussed explicitly, its fruits are on clear display. He has an innate biting humor—even sarcasm—but Henry Tilney does not use his cleverness to dominate others. Instead, he uses it for the good of those with whom he speaks. When speaking with Catherine, he will pose leading questions that encourage Catherine to reflect on her judgment of others. In so doing, he generally avoids speaking an unkind word, even about characters who behave appallingly. Instead, he helps Catherine to use her own wits to cultivate a deeper awareness of the complexity of human relationships, virtue, and vice.
All this may sound rather heady, but Henry and Catherine’s conversations are a joy to read, with an energy that pulls readers along for the ride. Perhaps Henry’s most exciting feature (at least where Catherine is concerned) is that he is an avid and unapologetic reader of novels. Their first exchange on the subject stands in stark contrast to Catherine’s previous conversation with John Thorpe. When speaking with Henry, she asks:
“But you never read novels, I dare say?”
“Why not?”
“Because they are not clever enough for you—gentlemen read better books.”
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days—my hair standing on end the whole time.” …
“I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.”
“It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do—for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds.”
While Catherine was already interested in Henry, his status as a passionate reader increased her enjoyment of his company. Additionally, he is forthcoming about his enjoyment of novels, even though this was thought by many—including John Thorpe—to be a rather feminine trait. As the novel continues, Henry’s honesty stands in ever-starker contrast with the craven dishonesty of the Thorpe siblings.
Evil in books and men
Gothic literature plays an important role in Catherine’s life, but there is an irony to her taste in books as well. The preoccupation of gothic novels is often the evil in the human heart. In such works, no matter a person’s wealth, status, profession, or personality, he may carry intentions of murder, betrayal, and any number of other horrors. There is a realism to these seemingly fantastical works.
But despite being steeped in gothic novels, Catherine struggles to imagine others’ motives as anything but pure in everyday affairs. The one time she develops a serious suspicion of another character, it is a heavily romanticized idea that a man may have secretly kidnapped or murdered his wife. This suspicion is caused mainly by the fact that the man lives in a romantic old Abbey house. Meanwhile, Catherine meets with people who really do have nefarious motives and never suspects a thing.
In 1963, the Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt published Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. In this work, she described seeing one of the architects of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, stand trial. He articulated a reading of Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative that—in his mind—justified his actions. Arendt, though, believed that Eichmann had drawn precisely the wrong lesson from Kant. More than their mere philosophical difference, though, Arendt was taken aback by how basically normal the war criminal who killed millions of her people seemed. He was not a raving lunatic nor an obvious megalomaniac, but a man who claimed to have been simply doing his job. In grappling with this experience, Arendt coined the phrase, “the banality of evil” to describe how Eichmann’s profound evil was not due to any kind of strange, bestial evil in him, but was instead made possible by his complacency and complicity. In Arendt’s writings, the phrase has a very specific meaning, but over time it has expanded. There is, though, still a clear line between Arendt’s views and the term’s use today.
It was the banality of evil that, in reading so many gothic novels, Catherine Moreland missed. She did not come away from them more attentive to the common evils of society, but only with an eye towards fantastical evils in beautiful locations. Though in our age we are unlikely to read gothic novels habitually, there are similar temptations for us in other ways. For example, it is far easier to see evil in the towering political figures and sinister forces faraway than in the very real daily evils in our immediate community.
Northanger Abbey is a coming of age tale, and Catherine grows in her discernment of character. Despite the fact that the novel lacks the mastery of later works like Pride and Prejudice or Emma, it encourages profound moral and artistic insight. If you’re looking for an autumnal read and are intrigued by the idea of melding the trappings of a gothic novel, the fun of a comedy of manners, and the social insight of Jane Austen, look no further than Northanger Abbey.
