The Different Worlds of Northanger Abbey

Bushra Boblai

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey occupies a peculiar spot in her bibliography. It is not one of Austen’s most popular works like Pride and Prejudice. It is neither very despised nor very beloved but its impact on the perception of the gothic novel during the Gothic Revival Period of the 18th and 19th centuries cannot be denied. The novel, at its core, is a satirical take on the tropes employed by the typical Gothic novels of the time and Austen uses the voice of her young heroine to make several scathing social commentaries about the society that she inhabited. However, due to the thirteen-year-long gap between the wriing of the book and its publication prevented it from making the social impact it could have had if it had been published into the society it had been written for.

Northanger Abbey was one of two novels published posthumously along with Persuasion in 1817. However, Northanger Abbey was the first full-length novel that Austen had finished in her writing career in 1803. Therefore, a close examination of both of the works will reveal a very noticeable shift in the maturity of Austen’s voice. Persuasion, which she had finished writing only a little while before her death has the voice of the established adult Austen. Northanger Abbey, however, was published in 1817, a whole 13 years after it had been finished. The story goes that Austen had sold the manuscript to Crosby & Co., a London bookseller who then refused to publish it or even allow Austen to have it published with another bookseller. The rights to the book were eventually sold back to Austen’s brother Henry in 1816 and with some revisions on Austen’s end, it was finally published in the following year.

There are several differences in English society in the two timelines that contributed to the measly reception that Northanger Abbey received. For this article, I will be covering three major themes regarding this timeline: fashion, Austen’s youth and the political aspect of childbirth, and the changing cultural perceptions of Udolpho in English society in the span of thirteen years.

I would like to begin by examining an aspect of genteel English society that played a huge if, at times, finicky role: fashion. The French essayist, Roland Barthes has described the “fashion system” as “the sense that fashion is an unspoken omnipotent actor in the language of dress, and thus is made natural in a discourse that otherwise does not make clear links between signifier and signified.”1 In other words, there is a lot of subtext in a community’s fashion rules that influence bigger roles in societal convention than we might imagine.

Now if we talk about fashion and Northanger Abbey, we have to mention Mrs. Allen, who is Catherine’s guardian and companion on their trip to Bath. She is a woman who is very enthusiastic about the latest styles. In Chapter Two, Austen tells us in plain words, “Dress was her passion.” So, we know that despite Catherine’s poverty, she would be well versed in the latest styles and be dressed accordingly, if only for the fact that she is travelling with Mrs. Allen. Austen also uses several scenes in the novel to indicate that Catherine was following the guidelines for the fashion styles of 1800-09. I want to focus on one particular fashion scene: the evening where Catherine first encounters her love interest, Henry Tilney in Chapter Three. She is described as wearing a “...sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings.” Muslins were the staple for evening dresses during the decade of 1800-1809 according to the Fashion History Timeline constructed by the Fashion Institute of Technology. White was a staple colour. However, things were very different in the decade of 1810-1819. “Textiles became more diverse during the 1810s; firmer cottons and silks supplanted the draping fine muslins of the previous years. Additionally, while white remained a colour very much in vogue throughout the decade, it gave way to increasingly brighter colours and patterns such as stripes” . This clearly indicates that the fashion conventions displayed in the book would not have been perceived as recent or current by the time the book had been published. Differences that may not signify much to the modern reader would have stood out starkly to the audience of 1817. This is because of the role that muslin played in the system of British colonialism. The East India Company would exploit workers in India and have the raw materials for muslin imported to British factories and have the end product sold around the world as a British good. This made it a very commonly accessible material that diminished its appeal to the genteel British society. They started to perceive the item as cheap and this led to the move towards cotton and silks. The book ultimately fails to portray the current fashions to its audience and in the process distinctly establishes that subconsciously the content of the book is not perceptive of the modern-day society. This diminishes the social commentaries that the book was trying to make.

Speaking on changes in societal perception over thirteen years leads us the next topic I would like to examine: Austen’s youth and the political aspect of childbirth during the two timelines of Northanger Abbey. This novel was written when Austen was 28 years old. The details for this book were brought on by the trips she took to Bath with her family in her twenties. Several letters describe a trip taken in 1799, where she fully partook in the social customs described in Northanger Abbey like frequenting the Pump Room and attending a ball in the Assembly Rooms. It was in fact during this trip, according to her letters to her sister, Cassandra Austen in 1799 that she witnessed her sisterin-law Elizabeth, get violently sick from a new pregnancy even though she had only given birth a mere nine-months earlier.

The danger of childbirth and the extreme risk it posed on women were extremely evident to Austen and the rest of her society. It is estimated that during the Regency period, two women would die for every hundred babies that were born. One of Jane’s own grandmothers, Rebecca Austen herself, had died from giving birth. This reality maybe the reason why she had such a negative outlook on childbirth. She wrote to her niece Fanny warning against young motherhood by declaring, “by not beginning the business of Mothering quite so early in life, you will be young in Constitution, spirits, figure & countenance, while Mrs. Wm Hammond is growing old by confinements and nursing.” The dangers of pregnancy for women and Jane’s experience with them is reflected in the novel. In Northanger Abbey, there is a wry observation that Mrs. Moreland had been expected to die in the process of giving birth to her fourth child Catherine, but unusually went on to give birth to six more children. It is remarked upon surprisingly, that despite the misfortune of so many pregnancies, Mrs. Moreland happened to be in a good constitution of health. The expectation was for Mrs. Moreland to have been wasted away by the birth of her brood. This is very reflective of the attidude of her society at the time towards pregnancy and childbirth. Women were expected to be ruined by the act of reproduction, and it was therefore morally acceptable for them to terminate their pregnancies if they wished to do so. In fact, until the passing of the Malicious Shooting or Stabbing Act of 1803, it was perfectly legal, and normal for women to terminate their pregnancies until even the late-term. At the time of publication, however, abortion had been criminalized and subject to the death penalty. So, Austen’s subtle indications of her view on the subject of childbirth would be lost on most of the audience of 1817. The moral penalizing of women having control over their reproduction in the decade in which the book was published meant that Austen’s satirical yet scathing critique of the cruel expectation for women to waste their physical health for the sake of bearing children would not have had the affect that they may have had on the society of 1803 that was more open, both legally and morally, to women using abortion and birth control as a health measure.

Another glaring aspect of the novel that was subjected to a significant shift in 1817, is the case of Udolpho and how the different time periods of the book’s publication and writing had different cultural perceptions towards the famous gothic novel. Ann Radcliffe’s novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho is described as the only new book that Catherine reads in the duration of Northanger Abbey. Radcliffe was the most famous gothic novelist in the 1790s and Udolpho had been published in 1794. It was such a household work, that several characters are described to have read it, and Henry Tilney seems to have some sections of the book even memorized.

Furthermore, there are some very obvious homages to the novel. One of the protagonist’s uncle had murdered his wife, and Catherine, as we know, suspects General Tilney as having done the same with his wife. Then there is the case of the Tilneys’ ancient housekeeper who is named Dorothy, which is very similar to Dorothee, the housekeeper at Chateau le Blanc the castle in Udolpho. Henry jokes that Dorothy is supposed to take her guests along many gloomy passages en route to her room which was where a cousin may have died. In Udolpho, Emily has to navigate similar passages and is assigned the room where the wife of the Count had died. These references would have been easily caught on by the audience of 1803 and be a clear indication of Austen poking fun at the tropes of the gothic novel.

However, Udolpho was not as popular in the decade of 1810-19 and these references and puns would have been lost on the majority of the 1817 audience. Radcliffe’s popularity had faded in favour of other novelists. Northanger Abbey’s satirical function is distinctly modelled on highlighting the very camp-like nature of Udolpho while presenting its audience with a different way to interpret the gothic novel. Due to the delay in its publication, Northanger Abbey was robbed of the opportunity of displaying these nuances and influencing an entire generation with these comparisons and ideas.

It is a sad reality that the gap between the writing and the publication of Northanger Abbey prevented its potential for active social commentary and the impact it may have had on society had it been published in 1803. The change in fashion trends and customs, and the change in the political attitudes surrounding childbirth and abortion, along with the outdating of Udolpho in the Popular culture all contributed to preventing Northanger Abbey from becoming a prominent piece of literature with a greater impact on the society it was published in. The book, as a result, occupies a strange vacuum in Austen’s bibliography and has been prevented from the acclaim it deserves.

Works Cited

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Edwards, Stassa. “The History of Abortifacients.” Jezebel. 18 Nov. 2014. Web. 12 Mar. 2021.

Franklin, Harper. “1800-1809.” Fashion History Timeline. Fashion Institute of Technology, 25 June 2020. Web. 12 Mar. 2021.

Franklin, Harper. “1810-1819.” Fashion History Timeline. Fashion Institute of Technology, 01 June 2020. Web. 12 Mar. 2021.

Kelly, Helena. “The Anxieties of Common Life - Northanger Abbey.” Jane Austen, the Secret Radical. New York: Vintage, 2018. 35-68. Print. K

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Lau, Beth. “Sexual Selection and Female Choice in Austen’s Northanger Abbey.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 50, no. 4, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018, pp. 465–82, doi:10.1353/ sdn.2018.0038.

Lauren Miskin. “‘True Indian Muslin’ and the Politics of Consumption in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015, pp. 5–26, doi:10.1353/jem.2015.0011.