Tuesday, January 10, 2012

What I've Learnt from Northanger Abbey

This took me a while longer than Saturday for me to finish Northanger Abbey than expected. See, usually I take about half a day to finish 130 pages.

This took me four days. Why?

Well (and I'm sorry, Miss Austen) I didn't like it.

I managed to get through it by appreciating it like a fine piece of art. Even if I don't like it, I can see the thought that went into it. I know that it the book thirteen years to be published. In fact, it didn't see the light of day until after Jane Austen died. So I saw the story through because of my sympathy for her.

Still, it wasn't the worst book that I ever read. It just wasn't the best, either. In fact, I had trouble pinning it down at all, which of course complicated this post a little, since I'm supposed to be writing what I've learnt from reading it.

Still, there are a few things that I did learn.

1) A good narrative voice can go a long way to compensate for annoying main characters. I'm sorry that I have to say this, but I found Catherine Morland to be much too silly to my tastes. The only reason why I was able to sit through the rest of the story was the narrative voice in the story, which had a wry wit that I enjoyed.
2) Although it's always fun to mock and comment on aspects of your times, building a book around it is a risky thing to do. Northanger Abbey was written to make fun of (in particular) Gothic Novels from the time in which Jane Austen lived. While I enjoyed this aspect to it, the story wasn't all that relevant to me, since we've got new things to mock. Sadly, once the burlesque aspect to the story is disregarded, there isn't much left to enjoy. In fact, most of the rest of it is mostly telling in order to move the story on to the next important lesson.
3) Showing goes a long way. Period. If there was a bit more this, I wouldn't have had to depend on the superficial impression created for me about Catherine that led to me disliking her because I couldn't connect with her on a deeper level.  

So yes, this isn't the most positive post about a classic that I've ever written, but it is what I felt and what I learnt and I don't regret having read Northanger Abbey. Now at least there was one more book to cross off my TBR list.

Have you read Northanger Abbey? What did you think about it?





This post was written as part of Jane Austen January. Next book: Persuasion.

24 comments:

  1. Good points. You know, I think part of the problem with the "classics" is the time difference. Pride & Prejudice is supposed to be a great love story and I guess in some ways it is, but to a modern reader it doesn't have much of a plot. There isn't much that would equate real conflict today, but at that time it was scandalous.

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  2. I liked Beth's comment. I like the classics to a point, but they don't seem to have the conflict that today's books have.

    I've been happy to see that my kids are intermingling reading some classics with reading some modern books at school.

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  3. It's Henry Tilney that makes the book for me. He is so real and humorous and alive - Northanger isn't my favorite book, but Henry IS one of my favorite heroes. And even Cathy, I find, grows on one with subsequent readings - the last time I read it I saw her more naive and less sheerly silly. Isabella is just purely silly, while Eleanor is purely sensible, and Cathy strikes a happy medium between the two, at least by the end of the book.

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  4. Nope. Never read it. Her name sound stiff. So I'm goin by that. Stiff name. Stiff read.

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  5. I agree with you and you reasons. NA is one of my least favorite JA books. The other is Mansfield Park (my daughter loves MP--to start an "argument" between us, one only needs to mention Mansfield Park and we're off.)

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  6. I've not read this book, but I've read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, among others of this time. Though I liked Sense and Sensibility, I think my inclination to love Pride and Prejudice stems from having watched the BBC version of the book with Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. Though these are classics, like someone else pointed out, they have little to hook today's readers.

    Your reaction to it, reminds me of my own reaction to Jane Eyre. I finished it because I had a book report to do on it and because I don't like to leave characters hanging. Also because I wondered if I finished reading it maybe the story would improve? It didn't, and I got a C in my book report for saying that the book was really not good.

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  7. It is the least favorite of all the Austen books, probably because of Cathy being so lackluster a character. I get why she wrote it and her message.Persuasion will remain my all time favorite. The showing part is part of the writing style of the times. It doesn't bother me when I read that period of authors, but it bothers me a lot if it's contemporary fiction.

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  8. I did read it many years ago and all I remember is being disappointed.

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  9. three good points. the narrative voice is so important.

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  10. I tried to read Sense and Sensibility, but got bogged down by incredibly long-winded sentences. I think within the first couple of pages she introduced something like 8 characters and I was totally lost.

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  11. Northanger Abbey is the only Jane Austen book I've ever attempted to read. I couldn't stomach it.

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  12. Northanger Abbey is not my favourite Austen novel. Henry is lovable and although Catherine is silly she rings-true as a naive teenager.

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  13. I've never read Northanger Abbey--I read Pride and Prejudice, didn't really like it, and haven't tried anything else by Austen since.

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  14. I read it a year ago and really liked it. I couldn't put it down. But it wasn't my favorite JA book.

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  15. Beth made a great point. While personally I haven't read it, I'm not the biggest Austen fan. I think I was the only girl in high school English who didn't just drool of Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, or jump at the chance to discuss the book. To me, it was "meh".

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  16. It's the only Austen I've read so far and I quite liked it. Partly because of the novelty of the archaic style and language.

    I think I'm right in saying that although published after her death, it was her first novel so really it's juvenillia.

    I'm guessing she wasn't that happy with it herself and that's why it was never published in her lifetime.

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  17. I have not read NA. I am reading S&S at the moment, I have to say I prefer P&P

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  18. I haven't read NA but read most the others...for me P&P stands out as does S&S. I love her character caricatures and subtle mockery of her world's attitudes.
    Coming from a country where even today 75% (my estimation, could be more, even mine was one) marriages are arranged including the well heeled and educated abroad, these stories are modern enough for us. You will still find a Mrs Bennet here in every other flat. :)

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  19. I think it is difficult to judge such things when we live in such different times to Jane Austen.

    I agree lots of authors highlight trends and comment on them in their novels, so Jane Austen is no exception.

    Take the 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' series by Sophie Kinsella , they are a comment on that type of young woman who abuses credit cards and spends, spends, spends. Frankly I find the character of Rebecca Bloomwood rather deceitful, self absorbed and irresponsible, but other readers love her.

    The style of writing in the past seems to have been more telling than showing, as I noted from reading Daphne Du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek, which I found heavy on the telling.

    I prefer to read the classics via audiobooks (because I find them hard going in style and pace as written reading material and often the typeface is so small for my eyes).

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  20. Glad to know what you felt about the book. I still like the book though because I loved the "mocking aspect" as you put it.

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  21. I love Northanger Abbey but we don't all have to love the same books. She IS a silly girl. So naive and foolish at times. I love the slam on the gothic novel but I agree that it can't carry the story. Honestly I think it might have been Tilney that carried me through that book (and the irony of the story-so funny.) I did JUST do a whole post on Tilney though http://writingwithshellyandchad.blogspot.com/2012/01/hot-guys-in-doublets-mr-tilney.html It's mostly pictures ;)

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  22. nice one it is very imergency for us.leo

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