Jane Austens Northanger Abbey depicts and enriches her readers with a better understanding of class relations

In Northanger Abbey Austen’s primary motive is the development of the main female character.  Even though Catherine Morland is not a typical female Bildungsroman, her realizations in who she is and who she is becoming are very evident throughout the novel.  Bildungsroman is defined in the Oxford dictionary as being, "A novel which traces the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character towards maturity."  Austen uses this growth and development to identify the class relations that surround Catherine. In particular, the relationship between sex and gender and the different role that both male’s and female’s have in society. The vulnerability of woman as a class that lack’s both choice and independence is demonstrated in chapter three when the narrator defines the dichotomy of falling and coming into love. “No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.” Catherine’s desire and purpose in the novel is typical of a young lady from her class and background, she is searching for both the love and approval of a man. Austen to expose different class relations juxtaposes this comparing her to the character of Mrs. Allen. In the novel Catherine lives with Mrs. Allen in Bath, she is a family friend of the Morland’s. Mrs. Allen has no children nor does her attitude represent the desire to have had any. Instead what we learn from Mrs. Allen is that her love and affection as a woman comes purely from constant gossiping and reputation making her more of a traditional and upper class lady. Her possessive nature over her own clothes and attire speaks for itself in chapter three when she congratulates herself, as soon as they were seated, on having preserved her gown from injury. “It would have been very shocking to have it torn,” said she, “would not it? It is such delicate muslin. For my part I have not seen anything I like so well in the whole room, I assure you.” 

Masculinity and the male influence in both aspects of dominance and manipulation contribute to this idea that there is a class differentiation between genders in the novel. Catherine’s inabilities to handle and manage situations that face her from the egotistical John Thorpe allude to such. The influence Thorpe has and the problem’s he creates for Catherine throughout the novel restricts her at points in pursuing her own interests. Thorpe when asking for a second dance from Catherine expects that being a gentleman from Oxford University he should so deserve one. When Catherine politely refuse he persists on inviting her to instead ridicule and champion those around him with his presence in chapter eight by engaging with her in other activities “Then let us walk about and quiz people. Come along with me.” Quizzing in this sense meaning to boast and test other’s intellects. Austen exposes the folly of Thorpe and the arrogance of the upper class in this scene and throughout the novel by letting the reader know of Catherine’s confusion and discontent to such standards.  “Catherine began to feel something of disappointment - she was tired of being continually pressed against by people, the generality of whose faces possessed nothing to interest, and with all of whom she was so wholly unacquainted.” 

Class warfare in the 17th century British society is further exposed by ideas of reputation, wealth, property and money. This idea is commented upon in an article in the Ladies Magazine “Man is too much occupied in the pursuit of wealth or fame to lend a willing ear, or a consoling voice, to the complaints or the afflictions of disappointed hope, and blighted expectation.” In Northanger Abbey the pursuit of wealth and the unwillingness to lend an ear of compassion is represented by that of General Tilney. In the novel Mrs. Morland describes the General to be a “strange man”. It is perhaps his obsession of both wealth and control of his family around him that makes him seem strange to Catherine. It is however the General’s relationships as the father of Henrey Tilney that becomes the ultimate predicament for Catherine’s own happiness. As the General’s true fixation for property and wealth in fitting amongst the upper class effects her most notably when he repudiates her engagement to Henry. The causation for such a rejection is purely based upon discovering Catherine’s lack of both status and family wealth. It is in these actions by the General that we discover his ultimate convictions and desire for prestige and reputation as it trump’s the desire for love and happiness of two individuals one of them even being his own son. Austen in her conclusion of the novel flaunts the total double standards and hypocrisy of such class divides when General Tilney retracts from his initial stance on the marriage after finding out the truth about the wealth of Catherine and the Morland family.

Like many of Jane Austen’s novels Northanger Abbey has an ending that satisfies the reader in the sense that both Henry and Catherine do end up together. It is however, Catherine’s arrival to such happiness that makes the novel one much more than just a simple love story. As Jane Austen crafts a classic that comes to such by depicting a world of characters consumed amongst differing class relations that Jane Austen herself lived amongst also.

By Scott Menck