The Different Worlds of Northanger Abbey Bushra Boblai
J
ane 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.” 1
See, “Catherine Morland’s ‘Plain Black Shoes’: Practical Fashions and Buried Convents in Northanger Abbey” by Alicia Kerfoot.
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