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山东财经大学
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题目：
论《诺桑觉寺》的反哥特观念
学 院
外国语学院
专
业
英语
班 级
英语0801
（注意原山经、原山财班级名称不同）
学
号
67
姓 名
李晓慧
指导教师
王俊华
山东财经大学教务处制
二Ｏ一二年五月
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On Anti-Gothicism in
Northanger Abbey
by
Li Xiaohui
Under the Supervision of
Wang Junhua
Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements
for the Degree of Bachelor of
Arts
School of Foreign Studies
Shandong
University of Finance and Economics
May
2012
Acknowledgements
It would not
be possible for me to complete the thesis without
the
generous help of many. First and foremost,
I would like to take this
opportunity to
convey my sincere gratitude and appreciation to my
supervisor Dr. Wang Junhua, under whose
supervision I have obtained
valuable ideas and
precious suggestions. He is very intelligent on
thesis
instruction and also shows his great
patience to me during my writing. I
also want
to thank all the teachers in the School of Foreign
Studies of
Shandong University of Finance and
Economics for their beneficial courses
I have
attended during my college life. Besides, I owe my
deep thanks to
my roommates who have been
encouraging me all the time, and to my colleagues
at Jinan Longre Foreign Language Training
Center who willingly took my part
of duties so
that I could have enough time for thesis writing.
L. X. H.
(名字的第一个字母)
ABSTRACT
On Anti-
Gothicism in
Northanger Abbey
Li
Xiaohui
Northanger Abbey
, one of Jane
Austen’s famous works, mainly tells the
story
of an innocent girl, a Gothic novel fan, who
treats herself as the
heroine of a Gothic
novel and makes many ridiculous adventures by
taking
Gothic stories as real happenings, but
finally learns to distinguish
between the
imaginary life in novels and the real life of her
own. The novel
criticizes the ridiculousness
and meaninglessness of Gothic novels in a
satirical way. The thesis analyzes Austen’s
parody of Gothic plot,
characterization, and
the heroine’s Gothic adventures in
Northanger
Abbey
,
and argues that the work reveals
her anti-Gothicism through a comparison
with
the typical features of prevailing Gothic novels
in her age.
Key words:
Northanger Abbey
; Jane Austen; anti-Gothicism
摘要
论《诺桑觉寺》的反哥特观念
李晓慧
《诺桑觉寺》是奥斯汀的一部
着名作品。小说讲述了一位沉迷于哥特小说的天真女孩，
把自己想象成作品的女主角，误把小说情节当做
真实的生活，经历了一系列的荒谬历险；但
她最终走出幻想，学会了分辨哥特小说的荒诞情节和现实生活
的区别。小说以反讽的方式批
评了哥特小说的可笑和荒诞。本文通过分析该小说对哥特式情节和人物的戏
仿以及女主角的
哥特式历险，并与当时盛行的哥特小说的典型特征相对比，认为奥斯汀通过《诺桑觉寺》
表
达了自己的反哥特观念。
关键词：《诺桑觉寺》；奥斯汀；反哥特
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………i
i
Abstract………………………………………………………….…
i
Abstr
i
act i
i
n
Chinese………………………………………………iv
Introduction………………………………………………………
…1
Chapter One Gothic Novels and
Northanger
Abbey
...…………3
I. Origin and
Development of Gothic
Novels……………………3
II. Austen’s Attitude towards Gothic
Novels……………………5
Chapter Two Parody of
Gothic Plot and
Characters…………..7
I.
Parody of Gothic
Plot…………………………………………7
II.
Parody of Gothic
Characters…………………………………9
Chapter Three Catherine’s
Adventures………………………11
I. On the Way to
Northanger Abbey……………………………11
II. Three
Adventures in Northanger
Abbey…………………….12
III. Catherine’s Coming back to
Reality…………………………15
Conclusion…………..……………………………….……………1
6
Works
Cited……………………………………………………..…17
如有三级标题，可以i. ii. iii. iv. 编写，为简明，建议目录中尽量不要写三级标题
，正
文中可有三级标题。注意各级标题大小写，确保目录中的标题、页码与正文中的标题、页码
保持对应。
注意每段的首行缩进、行距、字体、字号等要保持全文一致
Introduction
Jane Austen (1775~1817), who
lived at the turn of the 18th and 19th
century, is the most distinguished as well as
the most widely read female
novelist in
British literature. She was born on December 16,
1775, at
Steventon rectory in Hampshire,
England, and died in Winchester on July
18,
1817, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.
Austen lives in a large
family with six
brothers and one sister. Her father, George Austen
was a
rector for much of his life. Her sister,
Cassandra Elizabeth, was her best
friend. She
was educated primarily by her father and older
brothers, and
her own reading also helped a
lot with her writing. During Austen’s
education and writing life, her father was the
most important guide, for
he not only provided
her with a well-stocked family library, but also
supported her writing with much effort. He had
created a democratic and
easy intellectual
atmosphere at home. They often talked about
different
political or social ideas, and any
personal opinions would be accepted and
discussed. Jane Austen began to write when she
was only about thirteen and
the everlasting
support of her family was crucial to her
development as
a professional writer.
Austen’s personal experiences have a great
influence on her writing.
“Of events her life
was singularly barren: few changes and no great
crisis
even broke the smooth current of its
course” (James 11). Austen’s works
are usually
confined to a limited circle. In a letter to her
nephew Edward,
Austen made comments on her own
work as “[h]ow could I possibly join them
on
to the little bit of Ivory on which I work with so
fine a Brush, as produces
little effect after
much labor?” (Lefroy 160). Liu Bingshan appraised
that
“[t]he comparison is true. The ivory
surface is small enough, but the woman
who
made drawings of human life on it is a real
artist” (309). Some critics
accuse Jane
Austen of writing with a narrow vision, and that
her novels
are all about love, marriage, money
and rich relations, but Austen’s works
show
their values on reflecting the social realities of
her day. As Zhang
Dingquan and Wu Gang comment
in their book that “her [Jane Austen’s]
unique
sensitivity to human emotions, her careful
observation … made her
one of the finest
novelists of the age” (202).
Austen wrote six
complete novels during her literary career. They
are:
Sense and Sensibility
(1811);
Pride and Prejudice
(1813);
Mansfield
Park
(1814);
Emma
(1816);
Northanger Abbey
(1818); and
Persuasion
(1818). Her
literary works
have been attracting more and more readers from
home and
abroad since their publication. Jane
Austen is considered as “a genius
that appeals
to any generation” (Qiao iv). The British female
writer
Virginia Woolf said that “[o]f all
great novelists, Jane Austen is the
most
difficult to catch in the act of greatness” (Zhu
5).
The work discussed in this thesis is
Northanger Abbey
, which tells a
story
of the naive protagonist with a very over-active
imagination,
Catherine Morland, a Gothic novel
aficionado, who treats herself as the
heroine
of a Gothic novel, takes stories in Gothic novels
as happened in
her real life and makes many
ridiculous adventures, but finally learns to
distinguish between the imaginary life in
Gothic novels and her own ordinary
life
situations. Although
Northanger Abbey
was
the first to be completed
by Jane Austen, it
had neither been given enough attention nor been
adequately studied for some considerable time
in the past. In fact,
Northanger Abbey
has
its unique research value, particularly the
author’s
attitude towards Gothic novels, which
has aroused more and more critical
attention
and debates in recent years (see Chapter One).
This thesis argues that
Northanger
Abbey
shows Jane Austen’s
anti-Gothicism
through her satirical criticism of the prevailing
Gothic
novels in her times. In addition
to Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis
consists of three chapters. The first chapter
briefly introduces Gothic
novels, illustrates
different viewpoints on the relationship between
Northanger Abbey
and Gothic novels as
discussed by some critics and scholars.
The
second chapter analyses Jane Austen’s parodic
anti-Gothicism by
comparing the plot
arrangement and characterization of the novel with
that
of Gothic novels. The third chapter
discusses Jane Austen’s criticism of
Gothic
novels through focusing on Catherine’s ridiculous
adventures.
Chapter One
Gothic Novels and
Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey
is a parody of Gothic
novels. The first part of this
chapter briefly
introduces the origin, development and typical
features
of Gothic novels; the second part
mainly illustrates different viewpoints
on
Austen’s attitude towards Gothic novels.
I.
Origin and Development of Gothic Novels
The
word “Goth,” coming from the name of an ancient
tribe in Europe,
and its derivative form
“Gothic,” which reminds people of mysticism,
terror, and dark, were frequently used to
describe medieval things in the
18th century.
According to a highly-popular dictionary, the word
“Gothic”
means
a kind of architecture
built in the style that was popular in
Western
Europe from the 12th century to the 16th
centuries, and which
has pointed arches,
windows, and tall thin pillars and a novel
written in the style popular in the 18th and
19th centuries, which
described romantic
adventures in mysterious or frightening
surroundings. (Hornby 883)
注意引语段格式
Now it generally refers to a genre of
literature, which is “full of
depicts of
murders and supernatural things to thrill readers”
(Han 36),
combines both horror and romance and
“deals with the strange, mysterious,
and
supernatural designed to invoke suspense and
terror in readers” (Zhao
283).
From the
above quotes, it is known that some basic elements
in Gothic
novels include: setting in a castle,
which often contains secret passages
and
staircases, dark or hidden rooms; an atmosphere of
mystery and suspense
that arouses fear and
terror; supernatural events, such as ghosts or
unknown
giants coming to human life;
high and overwrought emotion, like anger,
sorrow, especially terror from which the
characters suffer; heroine in
distress, which
appeals to the sympathy of the readers; and
romance, such
as powerful love between the
heroine and the hero.
The first Gothic novel
is
The Castle of Otranto
:
A Gothic
Story
, written
by the English author
Horace Walpole. The work is remarkable because it
is the first attempt to find “a tale of
amusing fiction upon the basis
of the ancient
romance of chivalry” (Walter 115) and it “start[s]
a
fashion and set[s] an example for other
Gothic novelists” (Zhang 5). In
addition, the
novel was “an attempt to blend the two kinds of
romance,
the ancient and the modern” (Horace
19). Horace Walpole opens the door
of Gothic
novels and a lot of other Gothic novelists follow
suit. Among
them, Ann Radcliff and Mathew
Gregory Lewis are two most famous ones for
their respective work
The Mysteries of
Udolpho
and
The Monk
.
The
Mysteries
of Udolpho
(1794), through which
Ann Radcliff made the Gothic novel socially
acceptable, was an unparalleled success at
that time, and was also
frequently referred to
by Jane Austen in
Northanger Abbey
. In the
mid-1790s
the Gothic novel reaches its summit,
and David Punder comments, probably
an
exaggeration, that “this body of fiction may well
have established the
popularity of the novel-
form” (David 61).
注意文内引文规范。每个文献须在文
末参考书目中出现。
Besides
its popularity among the public, the Gothic novel
has a
notorious fame for a long time and has
been criticized as crude by many
critics. In
the preface of
Lyrical Ballads
, Wordsworth
commented on Gothic
novels as:
The
invaluable works of … Shakespeare and Milton are
driven
into neglect by frantic novels, sickly
and stupid German Tragedies,
and deluges of
idle and extravagant stories in verse. (Wordsworth
and Coleridge 248-249)
In spite of
criticism from many literary figures, Gothic
novels still
attracted a lot of readers and
the Gothic influence was amazingly continuing.
“It has been estimated that the reading
population of Britain increased
from one and a
half million in 1780 to between seven and eight
million by
1830” (Lin 24), and “Gothic novels
have exerted significant influence
on the
literature of later generations and on every
European literature.
They have exerted great
effect on the American literature, Hawthorn and
Allen Poe in particular” (Zhao 283). It is not
so hard for us to find out
that many works of
great literary celebrities bear Gothic elements.
In the
Romantic period, some famous works are:
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s first
published work,
Zastrozzi
(1810), was publicly-known as a
Gothic novel;
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or,
The Modern Prometheus
(1818);
Coleridge’s
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner
(1798) and
Christabel
(1816);
Keats’
La Belle Dame sans Merci
(1819)
and
Isabella
(1820); and
The
Vampyre
(1819) by John William Polidori.
Charlotte Bront?’s
Jane Eyre
(1847) and
Emily Bront?’s
Wuthering Heights
(1847) are also acknowledged as Gothic
novels
as well as Elizabeth Gaskell’s tales “The Doom of
the Griffiths”
(1858), “Lois the Witch”
(1861), and “The Grey Woman” (1861). Charles
Dickens is another mainstream writers heavily
influenced by Gothic novels.
In his great
works, such as
Oliver Twist
(1837-8),
Bleak House
(1854),
Great
Expectations
(1861) and
The Mystery of
Edwin Drood
(1870), we can easily
feel the
Gothic mood and themes. Edgar Allan Poe was a
prominent and
innovative re-interpreter of
Gothic literature in the 19th century American
literature, with his well-known works as
The Fall of the House of Usher
(1839),
“The Black Cat” (1843), and “The Murders in the
Rue Morgue”
(1841).
II. Austen’s Attitude
towards Gothic Novels
“The excesses,
stereotypes, and frequent absurdities of the
traditional Gothic made it rich
territory for satire” (Skarda 178-179).
As it
is universally acknowledged, the most famous
parody of Gothic novels
is
Northanger
Abbey
. We all say that
Northanger
Abbey
is a parody of Gothic
novels, but
disagree on Austen’s attitude towards them. Some
critics hold
that
Northanger Abbey
offers a refinement on rather than denial of the
Gothic: “Gothic elements in the novel are
employed to express Austen’s
feminist ideas
rather than mock them” (Chen ii); “Through parody,
Austen
revises Gothic novels in a comic way
for the purpose of negotiation with
Gothic
novels, as well as inheritance and preservation”
(Zheng 89).
However, some others argue that
Austen shows her sarcasm towards Gothic
novels
and emphasizes reason and realism:
“[
Northanger Abbey
] also
satirized the
sentimental novels, especially the Gothic novel,
which was
very popular at that time” (Yang
66), and “[the] mock of Gothic novels
runs
through the novel from beginning to end” (Sun 36).
Northanger Abbey
expresses Austen’s
sarcasm on prevailing Gothic
novels,
especially
The Mysteries of Udolpho
, which
has been mentioned
several times in the work.
With a close reading of
Northanger Abbey
,
we
can easily find the Gothic craze
surrounding it. First of all,
Northanger
Abbey
shares similar plot construction
with the prevailing Gothic novels;
secondly,
it contains a parodic characterization of Gothic
novels; thirdly,
they all describe the female
protagonist’s adventures and her love romance
with the male protagonist eventually obtained.
Additionally, Jane Austen
adopts a new tactic
of writing novels in
Northanger Abbey
by
addressing
the reader directly. We can feel
the sense of satire in reading the work.
The
following chapter deals with its plot construction
and characterization
to show Jane Austen’s
anti-Gothicism.
Chapter Two
Parody
of Gothic Plot and Characters
In this chapter,
we mainly examine Austen’s parody of Gothic novels
through comparing the plot construction and
characterization of
Northanger
Abbey
with that of Gothic novels. The novel seemingly
imitates the
construction of Gothic novels,
but it actually satirizes their format of
developing stories and depicting characters.
I. Parody of Gothic Plot
The widely
spread Gothic novels then were sharing almost the
same format.
A noble heroine, who is very
beautiful and intelligent and loves music and
drawing, for some reasons leaves her own home
to a completely new place,
usually a haunted
castle, where she experiences horrible and scaring
things
or being treated unfairly and cruelly.
But there often appears an unknown
hero who
saves the heroine and challenges the villains.
They would be
together at the end of the story
after so many hardships.
Northanger Abbey
seemingly follows the common format. The
heroine, Catherine Morland, leaves
her
hometown for a new place, Bath, and meets with the
hero, Henry Tilney.
After undergoing some
adventures and distress, the loved ones are
finally
reunited and get married. However,
Jane Austen actually starts making a
sharp
mockery on Gothic novels from the beginning of
Northanger Abbey
.
Different from the
Gothic heroine, Catherine Morland is a very common
English girl, who was born in an ordinary
family with her father as a
clergyman and her
mother a woman of plain sense. She neither had a
beautiful
figure nor high intelligence. In
fact, before she turned fifteen, Catherine
had
“a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without
colour, dark lank hair,
and strong features”
(3; . Instead of music or drawing, Catherine was a
tomboy and was very fond of boys’ plays,
especially cricket, and loved
rolling
down the green slope at the back of their house.
Judging by these
descriptions, we can see that
Catherine’s situation in life, her family,
her
own personality and disposition are all against a
real heroine in Gothic
novels: “No one who had
ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would
have supposed her born to be a heroine” (3; .
Through the characterization
of the heroine,
Jane Austen actually criticizes the general
expectations
of a well-mannered gentle lady in
Gothic novels.
Then the heroine begins her
adventure to Bath. In Gothic novels, the
heroine’s parents should be very worried and
severely anxious or in tears
with sadness when
she is about to leave home. Nevertheless,
Catherine’s
mother was not like that: she just
reminded her daughter of wrapping herself
warm
and trying to keep account of the money, and her
father only put ten
guineas into her hand and
promised more when she wanted it. During their
journey to Bath, nothing alarming occurred to
them except Mrs. Allen’s
having left her clogs
at an inn which later on was proved groundless.
“Neither robbers nor tempests befriended them,
nor one lucky overturn to
introduce them to
the hero” (11; .
注意前两段文学作品的引文格式要求：（页码;
章）。
Austen satirizes the expected
appearance of the hero to the heroine
in
Gothic fictions. Henry just appears on an ordinary
ball and is introduced
to Catherine by the
master of the ceremonies in a normal way without
any
air of romance. Henry, at first, was even
partly joking with Catherine about
the same
routing that young ladies share.
Later,
Catherine makes friends with Isabella Thorpe, who
is an elegant
and fine young woman, and they
both consider themselves as old friends.
It is
Isabella who opens the Gothic gate for Catherine
by introducing to
her tens of horrible novels;
one of them is
The Mysteries of Udolpho
.
After
reading so many Gothic novels,
Catherine’s eagerness to visit and explore
a real castle grows severe. Therefore,
she feels extremely excited when
General
Tilney, Henry’s father, invites her to visit their
house, the
Northanger Abbey.
Additionally,
there is one point we should pay attention to, .,
Jane
Austen has adopted a new tactic of
writing by addressing the readers
directly.
For example, at the end of chapter five, when
Isabella and
Catherine shut themselves up to
read novels, the narrator clearly says that
“[novels] have afforded more extensive and
unaffected pleasure than those
of any other
literary corporation in the world” (32; , and that
novels
are works
…in which the greatest
powers of the mind are displayed, in
which the
most thorough knowledge of human nature, the
happiest
delineation of its varieties, the
liveliest effusions of wit and
humour are
conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
(33;
注意文学作品的引文格式要求：（页码; 章）。
Here
Austen gives her own insight of the value of
novels, and questions
the social prejudice
against novels. The directness with which Austen
addresses the reader gives a unique insight
into Austen’s thoughts at the
time. And her
perspectives on novels are sharply in contrast
with that of
popular writers, especially the
Gothic novelists of the time.
II. Parody of
Gothic Characters
According to the common
rule, Gothic novels not only have a set format
in plot construction, but also share the same
characterization. Below are
some classified
major characters around the heroine in Gothic
novels: an
aunt or another older woman of
envy; a hero with an air of mystery; a female
friend harbors evil intentions; a villain who
is always bothering the
heroine; a tyrant,
usually cold and vicious, treats the heroine
cruelly.
We may find those familiar archetypes
in Northanger Abbey as well, but we
can also
find a clear difference between them.
First of all, characterization of the
heroine’s aunt Mrs. Allen is
quite striking:
It is now expedient to give some description
of Mrs. Allen, that
the reader may be able to
judge, in what manner her actions will
hereafter tend to promote the general distress
of the work, and how
she will, probably,
contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the
desperate wretchedness of which a last volume
is capable – whether
by her imprudence,
vulgarity, or jealousy – whether by intercepting
her letters, ruining her character, or turning
her out of doors.
(11;
注意引语段的格式要求，以及文学作品的引文格式要求：（页码; 章）。
In
Gothic novels, the heroine’s misfortune is partly
caused by her
aunt’s evil jealousy, but in
Northanger Abbey
, Mrs. Allen is not that
evil
or blood-hearted to Catherine. Mrs. Allen
may truly be a little vulgar and
careless. She
has a great passion in dress and “had a most
harmless delight
in being fine; and our
heroine’s entrée into life could not take place
till after three or four days had been spent
in learning what was mostly
worn” (12; . We
may say that she doesn’t fulfill her
responsibilities
as a senior companion by
carefully and whole-heartedly looking after
Catherine, but we cannot say that she shows an
evil or jealousy towards
Catherine. She has
nothing to do with what happened to our heroine
later
on, and this is entirely ironic when
compared with the usual Gothic aunt.
In
addition, Henry Tilney is different from the hero
in Gothic novels.
Generally speaking, a Gothic
hero must at first be mysterious about his
identity and later found born in the purple.
But Henry was no mystery since
his appearance
in the novel. At the very night when they met, Mr.
Allen
learnt that he was “a clergyman, and of
a very respectable family in
Gloucestershire”
(23; . Moreover, Henry Tilney didn’t fall in love
with
Catherine at the first sight nor did he
ever hold a strong affection for
her, which
was really weird for supposed Gothic readers
because “no young
lady can be justified in
falling in love before the gentleman’s love is
declared” (23; . As for why Henry finally fell
in love with Catherine,
the narrator said:
I must confess that his affection originated
in nothing better
than gratitude, or, in other
words, that a persuasion of her
partiality for
him had been the only cause of giving her a
serious
thought. It is a new
circumstance in romance…and dreadfully
derogatory of a heroine’s dignity. (284;
Apart from Mrs. Allen and Henry Tilney, there
are three other negative
protagonists:
Isabella Thorpe, John Thorpe, and General Tilney.
Although
there are flaws in their
personalities, they are never those Gothic
villains
who are extremely sinister or
treacherous. Isabella was beautiful but a
selfish and pitiful young lady who always
wanted to marry a rich man. Like
his sister,
John Thorpe was merely a vulgar and imprudent
young man and
was always trying to be handsome
and gentle. The only bad thing he has done
to
Catherine was telling General Tilney that
Catherine was not at all rich
so that the
General angrily pushed Catherine out of Northanger
Abbey.
General Tilney was a money-driven man
with a very strict sense of family
status and
wanted all his children to marry rich families.
These three
negative characters were never set
up, or threatened, or tried to murder
Catherine, they were quite unlike those
vicious villains in Gothic novels.
Chapter
Three
Catherine’s Adventures
We have
discussed the differences of plot construction and
characterization between
Northanger
Abbey
and Gothic novels in the
preceding
chapter. In the last chapter, we are going to take
a closer look
at the heroine’s adventures in
Northanger Abbey, the estate of the
Tilneys’,
which is the climax of the novel and through which
Jane Austen
shows us the absurdness of Gothic
novels and the significance of real life.
I.
On the Way to Northanger Abbey
During their
journey to Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney
deliberately
makes fun of Catherine’s innocent
belief in Gothic novels, and says to
her:
“[a]nd are you prepared to encounter all the
horrors that a building
such as ‘what one
reads about’ may produce? – Have you a stout
heart?
– Nerves fit for sliding panels and
tapestry?” (178; . Henry also jokingly
describes some horrible scenes to
Catherine, such as “an apartment never
used
since some cousin or kin died in it about twenty
years before,” or
“gloomy chamber … with only
the feeble rays of a single lamp … walls
hung
with tapestry exhibiting figures as large as life,
and the bed, of
dark green stuff or purple
velvet, presenting even a funeral appearance”
(179; . In fact, Catherine Morland was already
very eager to take her
adventures in the abbey
though she said to Henry that she shouldn’t be
easily frightened and thought the abbey has
never been inhabited and left
deserted for
years.
As they drew near the abbey,
Catherine’s impatience for a look at the
abbey
grew, and in accordance with her novel reading,
she thought Northanger
Abbey, by its name, as
a place with “massy walls of grey stone, rising
amidst a grove of ancient oaks, with the last
beam of the sun playing in
beautiful splendour
on its high Gothic windows” (182; . But to her
disappointment, the building stands too low
and even without an antique
chimney for her to
discern. What’s more, unlike those heroines in
Gothic
novels, she just passes between modern
lodges and “along a smooth, level
road of fine
gravel, without obstacle, alarm or solemnity of
any kind,
struck her as odd and inconsistent”
(183; . General Tilney Eleanor,
Henry’s
sister, are waiting to welcome her on the hall,
and she is shown
into a common drawing-room
where the furniture is in elegance of modern
taste and panes of the pointed arch, which
Catherine hoped them to be the
heaviest
stonework and painted glass with dirt and cobwebs,
are, on the
contrary, large, clear, and light.
The abbey is just a modern family house
with
large and lofty hall, broad staircase of shining
oak, long wide gallery,
ect., and the people
are all so friendly that she can’t feel any awful
future misery that would happen to herself
like what those heroines usually
undergo in
Gothic novels. The difference between her
imagination and the
abbey’s real
condition is very distressing for Catherine.
II. Three Adventures in Northanger Abbey
Although feeling a little disappointed at the
first sight on Northanger
Abbey, out of her
imagination, Catherine was delightful to be really
in
an abbey and began her imagined Gothic
adventures with her observation.
When she was
alone in her apartment, Catherine found that the
walls,
the floor, the windows, and the
furniture were all handsome and comfortable
which made her at ease. But she decided to
lose no time in examining anything
strange and
she suddenly noticed a large high chest that was
standing on
the back in a deep recess of the
fire-place. The sight of the chest made
Catherine forget everything else, and she
stood still, just gazing at it
and wondering:
“This is strange indeed! … An immense heavy chest!
– What
can it hold? – Why should it be placed
here? … I will look into it –
cost me what it
may” (187; . Driven by curiosity, she advanced and
examined
the chest closely. The chest was made
of cedar, inlaid with some darker
wood, and
raised on a carved stand of the same, with a rusty
silver lock
and broken silver handles. With
trembling hands and great difficulty as
well,
she finally raised up the lid, but to her
astonishment, there was
only a white cotton
counterpane that was “properly folded, reposing at
one end of the chest in undisputed possession”
(188; . Catherine felt
blushed at the sight of
it but she didn’t lose her heart for more
fascinating adventures.
The first night
in Northanger Abbey was stormy, the wind blew
strongly
the whole afternoon, and it rained
violently. Those characteristic sounds
brought
to her the dreadful situations and horrible scenes
in Gothic novels,
and for the first time she
felt she was really in an Abbey. But Catherine
knew that she had nothing to dread from or to
explore or to suffer because
the house was “so
furnished, and so guarded” (191; . However, she
still
looked around the room and
courageously but fearfully peeped behind each
curtain, hoping to see someone sitting there
to scare her or a hand placed
against the
shutter. However, there was nothing. Then she was
thinking to
go to bed. At that moment, a
mysterious cabinet appeared and suddenly
captivated her eyes. It was a high, old-
fashioned black cabinet, being
placed in a
conspicuous situation and thus escaped from her
notice. The
cabinet, with its key in the door,
aroused her great interest and she could
not
sleep till she had examined it. Catherine placed
the candle on a chair
with caution and tried
to turn the key “with a very tremulous hand” (192;
.
At first, she thought there could be nothing
in it, and she did find nothing
after checking
the double range of drawers. But later, she
surprisingly
found a roll of paper inside a
small door in the center of the cabinet.
At
that moment, “[her] heart fluttered, her knees
trembled, and her cheeks
grew pale” (194; as
she thought that the paper was some precious
manuscript and grasped tightly in her unsteady
hand. As she snuffed the
candle and was about
to read the paper, the candle suddenly
extinguished.
For a few moments, Catherine
felt awful with horror and “trembled from
head
to foot” (194; . She hastily jumped onto bed and
kept wondering “how
was it [the manuscript] to
be accounted for? – What could it contain? –
to whom could it relate?” (195; . When she
woke up only to find that many
papers were
just washing-bills, she felt humbled to the dust:
“Nothing
could now be clearer than the
absurdity of her recent fancies” (197; .
After two adventures in vain, Catherine seemed
to become a little sober.
However, when she
heard about the death of Henry and Eleanor’s
mother,
and none of the three children was at
home and only General Tilney was with
Mrs.
Tilney, her imagination, which was heavily
influenced by Gothic novels,
began to
exercise. She thought General Tilney was just like
Montoni, the
prototypical Gothic villain in
The Mysteries of Udolpho
, who imprisoned
the heroine Emily and his wife Madame
Cheron in Udolpho with an attempt
to acquire
their fortune. Catherine believed that General
Tilney was cold,
pitiless, and cruel; and that
he had murdered his wife and probably
imprisoned her in some hidden chamber
somewhere in Northanger Abbey. So
despite two
failures before, Catherine once more felt shocked
and chilled
at the thought of the guilty scene
of murder and imprisonment. She
remembered
that there was a forbidden gallery where lay the
doors “of which
the General had given no
account” (217; . She thought firmly that
unfortunate Mrs. Tilney’s confinement must be
one of them, and she was
so eager to examine
those mysterious apartments.
One morning, the
General’s early walk has provided Catherine a
favorable time when she proposed to Miss
Tilney to show her mother’s
portrait and
apartment. But when they were just about to turn
the lock with
fearful caution, “the dreaded
figure” (221; of General Tilney himself
suddenly stood before them and he loudly and
angrily ordered Eleanor to
come with him,
leaving Catherine stay in her own room for safety.
As a brave
reflection of the morning’s
experience, Catherine became resolute to make
her second detection on the forbidden door
alone because she thought “the
examination
itself would be more satisfactory if made without
any
companion” (222; . She was finally alone
and got the time to carry out
her adventure.
She quietly slipped through the folding doors and
tip-toed
into the room; before her was “a
large, well-proportioned apartment”
(223; ,
warm and neat, like the most comfortable apartment
in the house,
with nothing extraordinary,
anywhere but ancient, gloomy, and awful place
for imprisonment. Catherine felt a sense of
bitter emotions of shame and
her heart was
sick of its folly. What’s worse, Henry just came
back at
that moment and surprisingly ran
across her in his mother’s room. On
hearing
Catherine’s suspicion of his mother’s death, Henry
angrily and
firmly informed her that
Mrs. Tilney died of a sudden malady after being
carefully treated by a respectable physician,
and that his father, General
Tilney, loved his
wife sincerely in his own way and was greatly
afflicted
by her death. Being criticized by
Henry for her wild and ridiculous ideas,
Catherine then felt extremely depressed and
ran into her room with tears
of shame.
III. Catherine’s Coming back to Reality
Before coming into Northanger Abbey, Catherine
thought it might be a
haunted place full of
horror and danger, but after her three so-called
“Gothic adventures” were all proved in vain
and was mildly criticized
by beloved Henry,
she finally realized how foolish she had been and
came
to believe that the contents of those
Gothic novels have nothing to do with
human
being’s everyday life. Here Jane Austen shows her
satire on Gothic
novels and her sarcasm may be
illustrated much more clearly through Henry’s
words:
Dear Miss Morland, consider the
dreadful nature of the
suspicions you have
entertained. What you have been judging from?
Remember the country and the age in which we
live. Remember that
we are English, that we
are Christians. Consult your own
understanding, your own sense of the probable,
your own observation
of what is passing around
you—Does our education prepare us for
such
atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could
they be
perpetrated without being known, in a
country like this, where
social and literary
intercourse is on such a footing; where every
man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of
voluntary spies, and where
roads and
newspapers lay everything open? (228-229;
We
may see Henry as the spokesman of Jane Austen and
his words as
Austen’s anti-Gothic manifesto to
the prevailing Gothic novels and her
mockery
at their absurdity and remoteness from our daily
life and the
dangers resulted from Gothic-
craze.
Conclusion
In
conclusion, it is obvious that
Northanger
Abbey
shows Jane Austen’s
anti-Gothicism
by her parody of the plot, characterization and
adventure
of the prevailing Gothic novels in
her times. In
Northanger Abbey
, Austen
deliberately imitates the Gothic format of
plot arrangement, the
characterization and the
description of heroine’s adventures, but makes
them very different, or the opposite to those
in the Gothic fiction in her
own style. The
heroine Catherine Morland is what she is not,
neither
beautiful nor destined for a fantastic
fate, and her crazy love for Gothic
novels, in
particular, makes her the typical representative
of the ordinary
readers. Catherine was at
first an innocent and simple-minded girl, but
after reading
The Mysteries of Udolpho
and many other Gothic novels
introduced by
Isabella Thorpe, she took
Northanger Abbey
as the imagined
Udolpho. At the abbey
Catherine had her imagined Gothic adventures and
undergone some unpleasant experiences resulted
from her ridiculous
adventures. Fortunately,
she finally learnt her lesson and got out of her
Gothic illusions and she has indeed become the
true heroine by the end of
the story. Through
the heroine’s back to real life, Austen shows us
the
dangerous and ridiculous confusion between
ordinary life and Gothic
imagination, and the
importance of being realistic and reasonable.
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