Do you remember watching or reading stories like Snow White and Cinderella and immediately afterward wondering about the prince who might find you? Or when you read from your favourite romance novel and sighed dreamily as you closed the cover, imagining how you might stumble upon such a love story for yourself? As a girl, so many of my stories, dreams, and desires were first inspired by the books I read. I wanted to be a horse whisperer like Amy from the Heartland series; I longed for a faithful border collie like Lassie; I imagined being whisked away to a world like Narnia; I dreamt of my version of Prince Charming.
In the classic Jane Austen novel Northanger Abbey, Austen has a little fun poking at her current culture. At her time of writing, women sought and enjoyed books with gothic tones—dramatic deaths, suspenseful mysteries, paranormal activity, frightening madness, forbidden love, dreamy heroines and heroes, and the like. Unlike these books, she wrote novels that centred on the everyday problems of life among ordinary people. She knew the majority of her readers wouldn’t experience the dramatic lives portrayed in gothic novels, so she endeavoured to turn her readers’ gaze to the ills of society they were more likely to encounter: People who use you to their advantage, the appearance of honour covering crookedness, the goodness of being sensible, and the necessity of discernment.
In Northanger Abbey, Austen’s main character Catherine Morton is far from extraordinary—she is plain and average, and so is her life. She has two average parents who love her, and they are neither poor nor rich. Catherine’s appearance isn’t beautiful but it isn’t ugly either. She is not incredibly brilliant but not foolish either. She’s not the typical heroine: She never experiences the abuse of Cinderella, the quirkiness of Belle, or the beauty of Snow White. In every way possible, this girl is ordinary. Our witty friend Austen did this on purpose to mock the gothic novels.
Like the other women of her day, Catherine immerses herself in classic gothic books portraying murder, robbery, fleeing from villains, madness, and adultery. While love for literature is good—a virtue Austen highlights—we see that Catherine becomes so absorbed in her books that she begins looking for this kind of dramatic plot line in her own life. She swings open creaky cabinet doors expecting to find cryptic messages to solve but only finds faded laundry notes and linens. She remains watchful on her carriage rides, yet arrives safely to her destination.
This climaxes when Catherine creates a dreadful story in her mind pertaining to her host, presuming he had harmed his wife and locked her in a secret chamber within the abbey. In a scene of great humility for Catherine, as she lurks within the abbey at night, the man she secretly loves sees inside her imagination and shows her the foolishness of it, dragging her back to reality. Despite her usual sensibility, Catherine bumps into reality and sees how she allowed the chilling books she read to consume her own mind and alter the way she viewed reality.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to A Faithful Imagination to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.