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https://theconversation.com/northanger-abbey-has-attracted-a-trigger-warning-for-toxic-relationships-but-i-love-its-gentle-romance-bookworm-mr-tilney-is-my-favourite-austen-hero-188656>
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In our Guide to the Classics series, experts explain key works of
literature.
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel,
must be intolerably stupid.”
So says Henry Tilney to Catherine Morland, the hero and heroine respectively of
Jane Austen’s
Northanger Abbey (completed 1803, published posthumously in
1817). It is a neat summation of the entire attitude of the book.
A biting satire of popular 19th-century Gothic romances,
Northanger Abbey is
also a passionate defence of the novel and of novel-reading.
“[T]here seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing
the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only
genius, wit, and taste to recommend them,” Austen writes in chapter five,
directly addressing the reader – and assuring them that she has no interest in
doing the same.
Here, Austen is speaking about the context in which she was writing.
Northanger Abbey is a pointed response to moralising texts like James
Fordyce’s
Sermons to Young Women (1766) – yes, the one that Mr Collins is so
fond of in
Pride and Prejudice – as well as to a broader literary culture
that devalued novels and worried about their effects on their (young women)
readers.
However, her defence of the novel and its pleasures continues to resonate today
for many readers of popular romance fiction: a literary form often imagined as
“trashy”, and about whose readers (again, frequently young women) concern is
often expressed.
Emphasis is often placed on the harm books can do to their readers
(interestingly, one university has chosen to place trigger warnings on
Northanger Abbey for “gender stereotypes” and “toxic relationships and
friendships”); however, here, Austen focuses on the pleasure and delight books
can provoke and takes it seriously."
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
