Northanger Abbey Continued

Continuing with Austen's Northanger Abbey

Review

• The Gothic as a politically charged form
• tied to current events ("something shocking coming out of London")
• related to fear of disorder, excess, appetite, but also passion, awe, the extraordinary (in other words, the sublime about which we will talk later)
• But also in this novel the gothic is tied to something more ordinary
• We might focus on the novel's investment in education
• the country girl who goes to the city
• the naive girl who learns about the world
• the young girl initiated into love by the older man
• and so on
• We might notice all of the novel's "scenes of instruction"
• Catherine describing her own education (as torment)
• Isabella initiating Catherine into "female" rituals of Bath
• Mrs. Allen "educating" Catherine about what should be important to women
• Countless scenes where Henry "educates" Catherine (about the world, fashion, the picturesque, England, etc.)
• We might consider all of the "sources" of education
• books and reading
• friends and "friends"
• family and parents
• lovers
• the social world
• And finally we might want to consider the relation between the novel's form, Gothic parody, the novel's "narrative"--the education of the heroine, and the structure of the novel in general: Expectation leads to disappointment (or fulfillment?) as stated in the first sentence of Volume 2

What ultimately is the attraction of the gothic (or of horror in general)?

• fear?
• not really; more the feeling of fear while not actually being fearful
• in the gothic what do we have to fear?
• in this novel's "gothic" parts, what do we have to fear?
• in this novel, what do we have to fear?
• Return to Henry in Chapter 14
• what do we learn about him? that he's really a bully
• Who else are bullies in the novel? (see Day 1)
• What exactly do we have to fear from the "bullies" in the novel?
• Surprise or suspense?
• What are the sources of suspense?
• not knowing
• secrets
• whispers
• conspiracies
• imprisonment
• tyrannic exercise of power
• Note how "education" is the "cure" for all of these
• But what education?
• bullied by Henry
• education as torment
• education as oppression (if a woman has intelligence, she should hide it)
• Catherine's "close questioning" of Henry about Captain Tilney's behavior
• what good is "education" if one cannot act morally
• Captain Tilney's actions considered immoral by most everyone
• Henry's refusal to act considered immoral by Catherine (and us)

Catherine's Ultimate Education

• She succumbs to the Gothic
• Henry's gothic parody in the carriage (114-117)
• The "scroll" of papers (120, 126)
• Catherine's suspicions about the absent mother (131-132) 
• Ironies about Catherine's "education"--she's called "well-read" (133), "not misled" (136), "naturally" (137), and has "read too much" not to understand (140)
• She is corrected (educated, tormented, chastised, humiliated) by Henry (Vol 2, ch. 9, or ch. 24)
• Begins in confusion of the "domestic" and the "gothic"
• Henry thinks Catherine's visit to his mother's room is occasioned by honor and respect of the domestic
• It turns out that her interest is not domestic but "gothic" and sensational
• But the entire novel is interested in what might be called the sensational of the domestic--"neighborhood of voluntary spies . . . where roads and newspapers lay everything open" (145)--this is a world that assumes under every placid surface is something prurient, sensational, and gothic
• Henry manspains 
• but also admits that his father was "not perfectly amiable" (145)
• suggests that his mother might have suffered under his father
• asserts that gothic plots could not happen in England; rejects the sensational
• Catherine's response
• Romance over
• gives up extravagance and fancies, but also "liberty"
• "hated herself"--this seems too strong and suggests the ultimate goal of "education" is not to invest oneself with authority, but to make one question one's own right to authority, to hate oneself for one's failings, misreadings, misunderstandings and hope to find for oneself a teacher
• Henry called "formidable"--more bullying
• But still has reservations about the General (and as we will see, she's right)
• Her education "complete"--"the anxieties of common life began soon to succeed to the alarms of romance"--in fact, this has always been true, as detailed earlier in all the occasions when Catherine is fearful and the language of the novel becomes gothic

Actual and Natural Evil

• But Catherine was right about the General
• It turns out we have more than enough to fear in the ordinary and everyday
• Faithful promising
• Henry teases her about this expression (144), but promises are often not kept in the novel
• Isabella breaks her promise (several times)
• Catherine's friends force her to break her promise
• Catherine accuses Mrs. Allen of failing to warn her (and thus of breaking her "promise" in her role as guardian)
• And the General is the most sinister promise breaker of all (167)
• What replaces Gothic fear?
• After being told that she must leave Northanger Abbey, Catherine returns to her room, which earlier was the occasion of her wild Gothic imagining
• There she contemplates the "actual and natural evil" (167) that is far scarier than any Radcliffe novel
• There she resigns herself to a sleepless night "without curiosity or terror" but full of real suffering
• "how mournfully superior in reality and substance" 
• Ultimately, a happy ending (or is it?)
• Recall the scroll of papers that turns out to be an inventory of linen (i.e., a laundry list)
• Again, the domestic intervenes in place of the gothic; gothic imagining proves to be in excess
• or is it?
• To a young independent woman on the brink of marriage, what could be more frightening than a laundry list? Isn't the trivial and mundane universe of domestic chores, "homemaking," and the care of husbands and children, the ultimate frightening artifact?