Northanger Abbey and the critics

A much loved novel that we now understand very well

Last time I wrote about Northanger Abbey, I promised a review of what the critics have said. If you ever want to get a sense of the history of criticism for a major author, you will find, in a good library, books called The Critical Heritage. For each author they provide in one or two volumes a chronological anthology of the reviews, essays, diaries, and some scholarly criticism of the major works. Invaluable books and very instructive.

In May 1818 an unsigned notice appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine stating that they were “happy to receive two other novels from the pen of this amiable and agreeable authoress”. What a way to refer to Jane Austen! What a way to talk about Persuasion and Northanger Abbey! However, their praise was high—, Austen was under-rated, deserved to be better regarded, and would one day be one of the most popular novelists. Alas, the writer thought that she dealt in no “deep interests, uncommon characters, or vehement passions.” They are surely right that her genius was to write about “the history of people whom we have seen a thousand times”, but! what we admire is surely how unfamiliar she makes them; it is like watching an egg being cracked open for the very first time. Who would have predicted the insides from the shell? The rest of the piece praises her good Christian character. Quite right.

Such was Northanger Abbey’s introduction to the world.

Published alongside Persuasion after Austen died, it was reviewed early in the British Critic, a journal which had been set up to oppose the rising radicalism of the Jacobins in the 1790s. The British Critic reviewed a lot of books. It took, they wrote in this review, “a vast quantity of useful spirits and patience” in order to find books worth reviewing. One knows what they mean. Presumably the spirits were sometimes taken with water as they made their way through “an endless series of gloomy caverns, long and winding passages, secret trap doors…”. They are, of course, mocking the gothic novel (they refer also to the east wing of an old castle, banditti, and so on).

However, good novels are among the most fascinating productions of modern literature—and the British Critic thought Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were very good indeed: Austen, they said, displays “a degree of excellence that has not often been surpassed.” She lacks imagination, everything being quite familiar from normal life, but, “every individual represents a class… one of those classes to which we ourselves, and every acquaintance we have, in all probability belong.” (You will recall that this is what Johnson said of Shakespeare: “In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.”)

Her merit consists altogether in her remarkable talent for observation; no ridiculous phrase, no affected sentiment, no foolish pretension seems to escape her notice. It is scarcely possible to read her novels, without meeting some of one’s own absurdities reflected back upon one’s conscience.

So far, so ordinary. Then they say this: “our authoress never dips her pen in satire.” The British Critic thinks Austen treats follies instead “with good-humoured pleasantry”. Today we are just as likely to think of Austen as a satirical hater than as merely good humoured. That aside, we must stare in wonder at the idea that Northanger Abbey is not a satire. Instead the British Critic called it “simply, the history of a young girl.” After a summary of the plot, they call Northanger Abbey “one of the very best of Miss Austen’s productions”. (The reviewer had very little to say about Persuasion, thinking it “a much less fortunate performance.” The past is another country indeed.)