When I read the words written by Jane Austen telling me that Catherine Morland had been in training to become a heroine I knew I was going to enjoy this novel. This book allows us a glimpse of Jane Austen as a younger woman, as a beginning novelist and as a woman with a lovely sense of humor. There isn't any denying that this book, then titled "Susan", was the first to be sold by Austen to a publisher. There it languished in some forgotten corner for thirteen years before she tried to get it back from a firm which had no intention of publishing it. Ultimately she had to borrow the money to buy her own book back. People can probably get involved in scholarly discussions as to whether or not any revisions were made to this book by Jane Austen before her death, but that's isn't what I'm interested in. I wanted to read this book because I just couldn't believe that Jane Austen had really written a book which I didn't like. At all! Thankfully, I proved myself to be both right and wrong. I completely and thoroughly enjoyed this book and am only sorry that I allowed film versions of the book to turn me away from actually reading what the author had created.
Catherine Morland became a heroine for me to love and to sympathize with, while I watched her grow and mature. At the age of seventeen Catherine is quite young to be starring in her own novel but according to the times she lived in this was a perfectly respectable age for a young woman to become a wife and mother. Up until the time Catherine was fifteen she was the epitome of a tomboy, much preferring playing games outside to learning the skills to help her in her housekeeping and marriage. When she was around fifteen she discovered novels. It was the most delightful thing to read Jane Austen's words in defense of her heroine reading novels and particularly Gothic novels. The information contained within those books colored so much of Catherine's thinking and when she is given the opportunity of having a prolonged stay in Bath with close friends and neighbors she is ecstatic. Mr and Mrs Allen will become the surrogate parents of this young woman for their stay and upon arrival Mrs Allen continually bemoans the fact that she knows nobody in Bath, therefore she and Catherine are restricted as to who they can talk to. Very quickly Mrs Allen meets a former schoolmate, Mrs Thorpe, her son and daughters, and from then on Catherine can move in society with Isabella Thorpe and later her brother John Thorpe. One process leads to another and Catherine makes the acquaintance of Eleanor and Henry Tilney along with their father Colonel Tilney. Austen uses Catherine and her new friends to demonstrate the social limits and restrictions on young women of the time. She also illustrates how easily deceit can be camouflaged as friendship.
My reading of this novel was enhanced greatly because I was sharing the experience with a friend. We discussed the novel from the viewpoint of our previous interest in the writings of Jane Austen. I must rank this book right up there with my other favorite novels now. Yes, there is melodrama. Yes, Catherine is a very young woman prone to being fooled by others. Thankfully it is also about Catherine conquering her fears caused by the melodrama by facing reality and Catherine learning to see the motives of other people more clearly.
This novel is Jane Austen at her most natural, at least it seems that way to me. She is obviously having fun with this writing, she also seems to genuinely like her heroine and the other "good" characters in the book and shows us the deceitful characters we all need to recognize and avoid. Austen seems young in thought and spirit in this writing. The prose is light and very readable. It is also a relatively short novel. I would have liked for it to be longer (of course!) but specifically because I would have liked for some of the characters, even major characters, to have been presented in fuller form. The only portion I'm definitely a little disappointed with happens in the final chapter, but I'll let you discover that for yourself. Who knows, you might not have the same reaction at all. I do highly recommend this novel as a truly great early novel from a writer who was to go on to a fame which probably would have truly surprised her. This Penguin Classic edition is a wonderful version of this novel. It contains much information aside from the novel which was a great help for me while I was reading. The Notes from each chapter by Marilyn Butler, Exeter College, Oxford, were invaluable in keeping me in the time frame of what was happening in Austen's world when this book was written. I also highly recommend this specific edition of Northanger Abbey.Get more detail about Northanger Abbey (Macmillan students' novels).
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