Northanger Abbey is considered by many critics the work that represents Jane Austen’s writing in the first phase of her career. The book is a burlesque of the Gothic novels in vogue in the 1790s and the extravagance and little common sense found in them. The tone of mockery of the novel required a narrator that was detached from the story and was superior to the characters in order to guide the reader and present him with the necessary information to understand the irony of what is being told. The narrator of Northanger Abbey can be defined as the voice that will point out the absurdities of Gothic novels while pretending to be a sentimental novelist herself and, at other moments, will openly criticize not only the writers of such novels, but also the readers that are deluded by them.
The narrator of Northanger Abbey has been vastly studied; the inconsistence of narration in the novel as well as the importance of the narrator for the mockery intended by the story originated many analyses of Austen’s work. Schamber makes a complete study of the narrator of Northanger Abbey in “Narrative perspective in the novels of Jane Austen”, from the choice of type of narrator to the importance of its presence in the novel.
Throughout the novel we are led by the narrator to many beliefs regarding the value of Gothic novels and the absurdities of Catherine’s unchecked imagination just to have these same beliefs deconstructed, for example, as indicated by Brownstein “we are persuaded to think her [Catherine] absurd for having horrific ‘visions of romance’(Austen, 221) about the General – but then, on the other hand, they prove to be substantially correct.” (40) This reversals are used to emphasize the point of view that the narrator is trying to show to the reader without openly declaring it.
The double pretense of the narrator is also discussed by Wright in his work Jane Austen’s Novels: A Study in Structure, where he points out that in many passages Austen is “identifying herself with a sentimental novelist” (49) while in other instances she tells the truth as she sees it and “leaves it to the reader to discriminate between the two narrators of this story.” (50) Babb in Jane Austen’s Novels: The Fabric of Dialogue, also makes an analyses of how the narrator chosen by Austen is important in the development of the parody as she masquerades “as an author who champions the behavior recommended by the sentimental novel"(87) and opposes this in the "sensitively rational Henry Tilney, whose opinions are solidly grounded in reality." (87)
In the paper I intend to discuss the narrator of Northanger Abbey and highlight her importance to the development of the plot and the achievement of the story’s objective of literary mockery of the Gothic novel and social comment, using excerpts from the book to exemplify the arguments.
The narrator of Northanger Abbey is an essential element to achieve the purpose of literary burlesque. To understand this it is necessary to comprehend Austen’s choice for the specific narrator she uses in the novel and the inconsistences encountered during the novel. In order to completely unravel the hidden meanings of the novel the reader needs first to understand the narrator and its place in the story.
Bibliography
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Penguin Books: London. 2006. Print.
Babb, Howard S. Jane Austen’s Novels: The Fabric of Dialogue. Ohio State University Press. 1962. Print.
Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago. 1983. Print.
Copeland , Edward (ed) et al. The Cambridge companion to Jane Austen. Cambridge University Press: Melbourne, Australia, 1997. Print.
Halevi-Wise, Yael; Interactive Fiction: Scenes of Storytelling in the Novel. Greenwood Publishing Group: London. 2003. Print.
Litz, A. Walton. Jane Austen: A Study of Her Artistic Development. Chatto and Windus: London. 1965. Print.
Miller, Christopher R. “Jane Austen’s Aesthetics and Ethics of Surprise”. Narrative 13.3 (2005): 238-260.Web. 31 Oct. 2011.
Nelles, William. “Omniscience for Atheists: Or, Jane Austen’s Infallible Narrator”. Narrative 14.2 (2006): 118-131. We. 31 Oct. 2011.
Rathburn, Robert C. From Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad: Essays Collected in Memory of James T. Hillhouse. University of Minnesota Press: USA. Print.
Schamber, Julie A. “Narrative Perspective in the Novels of Jane Austen”. MA theses. Drake University, 1969.
Wright, Andrew H. Jane Austen’s Novels: A Study in Structure. Penguin Books: Mitcham. 1962. Print.
Zimmerman, Everett. “The Function of Parody in Northanger Abbey”. Modern Language Quarterly 30.1 (1969): 53-63. Web. 05 Oct. 2011
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