Taking The Castle of Otranto as your example, outline the main conventions of the Gothic novel, and show how your knowledge of

Taking The Castle of Otranto as your example, outline the main conventions of the Gothic novel, and show how your knowledge of these conventions affects your reading of Northanger Abbey. Is Northanger Abbey most accurately described as parody of the Gothic genre, or is there a more complicated relationship going on?

Gothic novels purport to revive old stories and beliefs, exploring personal, psychical encounters with the taboo (Williams, 2000). The genre, as typified by The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, involves a beautiful innocent young woman who is held captive by an older, powerful, evil man in his large, ancient and gloomy residence for his own lustful purposes and who escapes, with the aid of supernatural manifestations, errors caused by “false surmises and conjectures based on partial narratives” (Hoeveler, 1995, p127) and a handsome young hero. Walpole's novel centers around the tyrant where the female writers in the genre, for example, Ann Radcliffe, focus more on the female victim and what she is thinking and feeling, exploring women’s anxieties about their lack of control of their feelings, their bodies, and their property, and their desire for something far more extraordinary and exciting than simply to be a domestic woman. The use of the supernatural by Walpole is so frequent and monstrous as to excite laughter rather than terror but for Radcliffe and Austen the supernatural is not visible but is an invisible hand that makes sure that good always triumphs and evil is always punished (Andriopoulos, 1999) .

It is necessary to be aware of these Gothic conventions to be receptive too much of the humour in Northanger Abbey, as the humour arises from the similarity or contrast of events to the gothic. There are three gothic-like aspects to the novel. The first is the character of the General as gothic villain, patriarch and usurper and the Abbey as his gothic residence; the second is the exploration of the dead mother’s bedroom; and the final incident involves Catherine’s expulsion from the Abbey. Both the latter incidents end in very ordinary, anti-climactic ways, in contrast to gothic stories. The narrator also contrasts other ordinary incidents, with how they might have developed in a gothic novel; for example, Catherine’s journey to Bath is accomplished “with suitable quietness and uneventful safety. Neither robbers nor tempests befriend them, nor one lucky overturn to introduce them to the hero” (Austen, 1933, p19).

Many commentators have concluded that Northanger Abbey is a parody of the Gothic genre. Whether or not one agrees with this view depends on the definition of parody that one accepts. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory offers the following relevant defining concepts: “The imitative use of the words, style attitude, tone and ideas of an author in such a way as to make them ridiculous. … by exaggerating certain traits. …its purpose may be corrective as well as derisive.” Austen undoubtedly imitates Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), in substantial passages, as the influence of other contemporary ...

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The principle correction that Austen makes is to the gothic notion of femininity. Hoeveler sees Austen as “hopelessly ambivalent” (1995, p129) about her attitude to gothic feminism but an alternative view is that Austen enjoys the gothic form but wishes to include her own feminism which is stronger and more resistant to being the victim than in Gothic novels. The strength exhibited by Catherine when she refuses to go on the outing with the Thorpes is very ungothic. Typically, she would have gone along, suffering in silence, and experienced some other tragedy as a result.

Austen reminds us that the most domestic situation can have gothic underpinnings of violence, abuse and exploitation of women, especially where men exhibit the characteristics of General Tilney (Neill, 1997). Women remain, in Austen’s world, “property, sources of income, breeders of heirs … [131] buried alive within all of the separate cabinets that dot the landscape of England” (Hoeveler, 1995, p130-131). This is the evil of Austen’s universe, not the lust and murder of Radcliffe’s mysterious southern Europe. The common factor is the influence of the patriarchy on the innocent female victim but, for Austen, the prime vulnerability is economic rather than sexual. Austen explores the same issues for women, as does Radcliffe, but in a pastoral, more realistic way making it clear, despite Henry’s protestations to the contrary, that gothic incidents can happen in England too, when wealth and power are corrupted and abused; in the family or outside it (Neill, 1997).

Northanger Abbey is a commentary on the social life of the time including consumerism and the affect of print culture on social life at every level. Austen grapples with the community’s concern over the influence of print technology on the reader, especially the female reader, but comes out in favour of the triumph of female good sense over the influence of the media. Austen’s message is that even the most ordinary young woman (of ordinary appearance, ordinary fortune, ordinary education, ordinary attitudes) can benefit from being permitted to read as she chooses.

Henry’s “discussions about reading participate in and are a product of, the … broader cultural discourse concerning the reading of young women” (Jerinic, 1995). Austen “celebrates the figure of the reading woman” (Jerinic, 1995), allies her with good men who read and contrasts her favourably to those who do not read (Mrs. Allen, Isabella Thorpe and John Thorpe). Austen emphasizes the boorish nature of these illiterate characters irrespective of whether they be males or females.

Catherine, though avidly absorbed in Udolpho, does not enter into fanciful elaborate conjectures until after Henry’s (tongue-in-cheek) story of what she might expect at Northanger Abbey and even then, not for long. Her judgements of people are consistently based on observed behaviour and not on romantic notions, thus she does not see the Romantic Suitor in John Thorpe, nor the Gothic Abductor in General Tilney but she does see the true manipulator in him that makes him a real Gothic Villain. Catherine’s reading empowers her to resist attempts by John and Isabella to control her behaviour (though her feelings for Henry disable her ability to resist his arguments and teasing). This idea of empowerment follows Radcliffe’s idea that reading removes one from the temptation of moral folly (Udolpho, per St Aubert) but goes further to demand the woman’s right to choose for herself what she reads.

Contrary to Radcliffe’s heroine, Catherine’s reading material is not chosen for her by a male mentor, though Henry does come to make a significant contribution to her education through their Socratic dialogues. Henry conveys the view that women are a blank slate and “only men have sufficient backgrounds and knowledge to educate women, and until they do so women will suffer in their ignorance” (Hoeveler, 1995, p126). Although this view may be seen as preferable to the General’s, it is still patronizing and it is debatable whether it should be regarded as Austen’s own view, as Hoeveler believes.

Northanger Abbey is not a parody of the gothic novel, even though the influence of the ideas from Gothic novels, on the heroine is the object of much of the humour in the book. Austen gives us many insights by contrasting the naivety of the heroine with the many worldly people she meets and by examining the power of literature, even in its lighter forms, to influence our view of the world and to lead us into amusing quandaries, and particularly examines, through the heroine’s adventures, how preconceptions and prejudging others can lead to great injustice, wherever these preconceptions come from. Austen joins the gothic authors most closely in her promotion of self-denial and the illegitimacy of the pursuit of self-interest (Andriopoulos, 1999).

References

Andriopoulos, Stefan. “The Invisible Hand: Supernatural Agency in Political Economy and the Gothic Novel.” ELH 66.3 (1999): 739-59.

Austen, Jane. The Novels of Jane Austen. Ed. R.W. Chapman. 3rd edition.

Oxford:OUP, 1933-69

Cudden, J.A. Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory. Penguin: London, 1999.

Hoeveler, Diane. “Vindicating Northanger Abbey: Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and Gothic Feminism.” Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism. Ed. Devony Looser. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1995. 117-35

Jerinic, Maria. “In Defense of the Gothic: Rereading Northanger Abbey.” Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism. Ed. Devoney Looser. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillian, 1995. 137-49

Neill, Edward. “The Secret of Northanger Abbey.” Essays in Criticism 47 (1997): 13-32

Williams, Anne. “The Horror, the Horror: Recent Studies in Gothic Fiction.” Modern Fiction Studies 46.3 (2000): 789-99