Rereading Review: "Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen

I've decided to try out something called a 'rereading review' in which I will review now and again, a book I have read before. This usually consists of me reading the book again for some reason (usually because I really have an itch for it) and I promise, I won't just fill this up with rereading my favourite book (which I reread every few months anyway). And if you don't know what my favourite book is, then welcome to my page - you're clearly new here.

I naturally wanted to reread my favourite Austen novel, Northanger Abbey after being lost in Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home because mentally, I am still in Jane Austen's world. I really don't want to leave so I'm also thinking about rereading Persuasion (which is my close second favourite Austen novel). Hopefully, I can make this go as smoothly as possible. You've probably read my unhinged review of Love and Friendship and so, you're going to be more than used to this!

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The first thing I must say about Northanger Abbey is that I completely and utterly relate to the way in which Catherine Morland is often treated with a kind of patronising niceness. It almost feels like you want to shake some of the characters, especially Isabella (I get it, they're best friends - but honestly, please give my girl room to breathe). When we get to the ballroom scenes, we definitely see how Catherine is both the heroine and the completely underestimated character. Many people who aren't her parents don't realise how resourceful she actually is. But they will eventually encounter her passion. Jane Austen weaves parts of her own personality into her characters and I think here, there is definitely a sense of Jane's own vibrant inner-life.

It's perhaps one of the reasons I love Catherine Morland - she knows who she is but she also has a deep, profound inner-life and personality. For example: she is able to hold her own against a man who argues about how she should write on him in her journal. She states that to suppose she doesn't have a journal. This sets him off into a rant about how women should have journals - something where Austen definitely puts in her own opinions about how women are naturally better writers than men. It is sneaky yes, and it completes the whole picture of power dynamics. But one thing that it does really well is it presents Catherine Morland's ability to pull the full explanation and answer out of whoever she is speaking to. This is done again when Isabella claims she has a letter from John Thorpe in which it states that Catherine has accepted John's romantic advances (this is obviously completely untrue, she has not).

I have always loved her obsession with gothic novels, especially the Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. When Catherine talks about the south of France, she has never been but she is talking about her experiences of reading. When she speaks about the weather in the novel and the way she wishes people had read it, it is often aligning with some of my own opinions. Personally, I wish more people would read Northanger Abbey instead of just rereading Pride and Prejudice all the time. On top of this, when Catherine does meet people (the Tilneys) who have read these books, the friendship is odd, fleeting and often not very much like a friendship at all. Catherine's connection to these two oddities is something to pay attention to in the book.

When it is therefore explained that she is to go to Northanger Abbey, she is very excited and yet must remain somewhat restrained in her opinions outwardly. Though she hears stories, she can hardly contain herself. Jane Austen uses Catherine's obsession with the gothic to present to us that she would definitely be more than pleased to go to an abbey. When she gets there though, there is something rather unremarkable about it, though it does not thwart her efforts to enjoy herself and the joy of Isabella getting married to her brother soon is something that she has to look forward to as well (even though she is informed that the wedding is to be delayed). Jane Austen's disgust with marrying for money is also present constantly throughout the text where Isabella states that she would never love anyone else but Catherine's brother - even if the wedding and marriage was not very expensive at all.

I've spent far too long on this review already, but Catherine Morland has always been one of the most fascinating characters in Georgian literature for me. She has passion and fire, but is often too restrained to show it. She's introverted and thoughtful, and often admits that she is a people-pleaser, yet she never enjoys being called a liar. The novel jerks around her thoughts, feelings and the atmosphere of change around Bath - but it never fails to entertain. Bath seems to be reflected in Catherine's eyes. There's a night where Catherine's upset turns to hunger, then the hunger turns to tiredness and she sleeps straight for nine hours. The constant life of Bath and the ballrooms, engagements and such, definitely has an impact on the young Catherine. Growing up, she goes from a normal child (or rather abnormal by the standards of the day) to a pretty and refined girl by her mid-teens. We can say that today, this is a normal trajectory - but for the Georgians she is seen as a little girl that doesn't like her studies or her manners who learns to be a true woman. One thing she does not lose is the inner-fire which pervades some of the outbursts she has in the book.

If you have not read Northanger Abbey I would definitely recommend it. If you have read it then, do as I did and reread it. This book is quite possibly one of the most incredibly atmospheric novels to come out of its era. This is simultaneous to the fact that there is barely any description of housing or weather (little as it may be). Much of the atmosphere relies on the mood taken by our heroine.