Jane Austen does gothic horror with insta-ready clothes and great interiors: Northanger Abbey

[music] Every book has two stories. The one it tells. And the one it hides. Welcome to the Secret Life of Books. I'm Sophie G, academic and writer. And I'm John T. Claypole, broadcaster and producer. In this podcast, we tell the story behind the story of literary classics everyone wants to read, feels they should read, or has already read and loved. Today, North Hanger Abbey by Jane Osten. How exciting! We've made it, Jane Osten! North Hanger Abbey. It was the first novel she sold and the last novel to be published. It was published at the end of 1817, a few months after Osten's death at the age of 41. Can you believe that she'd done all that by 41? But the composition of the novel dates back 20 years earlier when Osten was in her early 20s. And it's possibly the most autobiographical of her early works. And it tells the story of the 17-year-old book nerd named Catherine Molland, who travels to Bath, a very fashionable city. With a neighbour, she falls in love, she gains and loses a friend. She visits a not-so-spooky, stately home and Abbey. And she learns that life doesn't quite work out as her beloved novels would have her believe. So in this episode, which, as advertised, is our very first on Jane Osten. We're going to learn about Osten's childhood, how it shaped this novel. And as we go onto other Osten novels, we'll be seeing this playing out in subsequent texts. How failed romance encouraged her to write, and how she took further inspiration from a sadistic local aristocrat who relaxed by beating his servants and killing animals with an axe. And most of all, we're going to be asking, what is it exactly that makes Osten's books so enduring and popular when those of her contemporaries have mostly fallen by the wayside? Hey, I'm going to steer the calm. Immediately, this episode has begun right into the ditch by going off script. But on the way here this morning, 20 minutes ago, I was walking here and I realized that a woman walking towards me was wearing a Jane Osten T-shirt. And so this seemed to me so serendipitous. Iconic. And it made me conclude two things. The first is the complete relevance of what we're doing so far. I mean, you know, young people are wearing Jane Osten T-shirts. And here are we just at the absolute forefront of the avant-garde. Yeah. And then I thought, actually, that's too modest. And I thought, we're starting a revolution here, Sophie. We are igniting the world's interest in classic books. And here was somebody walking down the street, probably a disciple, subscriber of Super Life of Books, wearing a Jane Osten T-shirt. And soon we're going to start seeing dozens and hundreds and thousands of young people wearing classic books, T-shirts. How was, I'm going to say rereading Northanger Abbey, because I'm sure you've read it many times before. Many times before. It was a redemptive experience, John T. So the last time that I read Northanger Abbey and engaged with it was when I was pregnant with my first child and I was invited to give a talk at Yale University and I thought I would give my talk on Northanger Abbey. So I, you know, I got it already. I said, I thought I was saying some really great things about it. I was savaged by the Yale University English department at that talk. Right. I was told that I didn't know what free and direct discourse was. I mean, that's not, that wasn't exactly what they say, but that was the vibe. Yes. And that's pretty crushing when you're going in as a young Austin scholar, not to know what free and direct discourse is. But how could it be redemptive? I mean, sure. I was so rereading it. I, first of all, I thought actually that was free and direct discourse. Yes. That was right. And also just reminded of the amazing subtlety and complexity of this novel. In some ways, it's quite crude. Obviously, it doesn't have that sort of fluidity and kind of integrated quality that the later writing has like persuasion and mensfield part. But the raw energy, it's just, it's amazing. You can really see the young Austin starting to understand her identity as a storyteller and someone who was, you know, deeply engaged with the history of books. She was a raw dog. She was a raw dog. She was a revolutionary, like the woman in the, in the Penguin Classics T-shirt. But just to come back to your personal redemption, I think it can be redemptive until you're finished recording this episode because I think it's what happens in the next, I see. In the next 50 minutes or so, which will determine where will not it's been. No pressure. I mean, I could at the end of it say, Sophie, that wasn't very good. You don't understand free discourse. Indirect discourse. Free indirect discourse. And it would then double down on your trauma. So anyway, I just think there's a lot at stake, right? Between in what we're doing right now. Let's see how it cares, shall we? Yeah. How was it to you reading it? So Jane Austin is one of my blind spots in literature. And I think that's a nice dynamic for us to have in this episode because I read Pride and Prejudice. I think I got halfway through Emma in my 20s, but shamefully didn't finish it. So I came at it and you and I enjoyed it a great deal. I was surprised at how funny it is. I was surprised at all the playful meta stuff, the way she's sort of constantly pulling back from her story and her characters to make little jokes to the reader. So I loved all of that about it. And yeah, but it was the humor, I think, that because most 18th century humor isn't very funny anymore. But Jane Austen is. She's probably funny. And she's probably funny in all of her books, but she's really funny in this one. Sophie, what happens? Like football, Nothanger Abbey is a novel of two halves. That's your joke, John T. Inlet's a good one. It's first set in Bath and then it's set in a country house called Nothanger Abbey. And just keep the sporting metaphor going. It's fair to say that Austen gives this novel 110%. She does and there's no eye in teamwork, Sophie. You'll go anywhere today, where are you, John T? So Catherine Mawland, the heroine of the novel, is one of 10 children of a Wiltshire clergyman. She's a reformed tomboy. She's bookloving and she's desperately naive. When she's 17, some wealthy neighbours take her for a holiday in the spar town of Bath. And shortly after arriving in Bath, she falls in love with the first man she meets, Henry Tilney, who turns out to be a great guy. She also befriends Isabella Thorpe, who's a beautiful, confident, quite flighty older girl. By coincidence, Catherine's brother James arrives from Oxford with his friend John, who just happens to be Isabella's brother. John Thorpe is a huge boy. He's a braggard. Think of Boris Johnson in his Bullington club days. John Thorpe takes a fancy to Catherine, as you would actually because she's absolutely lovely. And in his overbearing way, prevents her from seeing more of Henry Tilney. But Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor and seemingly charming father, General Tilney, are more than a match with the rather idiotic John Thorpe. And through their overtures, Catherine is able to resume her contact with Henry Tilney. After various towing and frowing, Catherine's brother James becomes engaged to Isabella Thorpe, though there are to be many complications on that front. And the Tilney's invite Catherine to stay with them at their family home of Northanger Abbey. And Catherine's absolutely delighted because she's read so many Gothic novels, these overwrought, superstitious, very fanciful, improbable texts that were very popular in the late 18th century. She is just desperate to go to a real live Abbey, the kind of place where a Gothic novel might actually play out. And when she's there, even though the house itself turns out to be a nicely renovated, gentrified building, she becomes convinced that Henry's mother, whose long did, was murdered by their father, General Tilney. Henry, after a while, figures out that this is what Catherine thinks. And he shames her and she overcomes her delusion and realizes that it couldn't possibly be true. But as it turns out, she's not completely wrong. General Tilney does turn out to be a pretty horrible man. And he returns from a trip from London inexplicably, contrary to all laws of 18th century hospitality, he turfs Catherine out of the house and she has to travel home alone. It's very shocking for her. And it transpires that what General Tilney's discovered from a chance meeting with John Thorpe, the idiotic brother of Isabella, is that Catherine doesn't actually have any money, which is the only reason that he invited her to come to Northanger Abbey in the first place. So Catherine goes home, but the lovely Henry Tilney pursues her there. He apologizes for his father's behavior and he proposes. Listen, Catherine marries him. - Okay, two things. First of all, I think the idea of Henry Tilney being just a lovely guy, as you've said twice, and that's an ops us. - Yes. - Is a pretty naive reading of the book. I think we're gonna come to blows over this later. - Well, nice pick up, John T, because I was actually setting your, you and me up to reverse that position. - Oh, wow. You played me. - It's a clever setup. Henry Tilney's, till he's anything, but a nice guy. - Okay, so this is you all over. Every time I think I'm being clever, it turns out you're actually just setting me up. - Yeah, it's 'cause I'm an aries. I'm gaslight, didn't you? - And secondly, I think we should, in the edit of this, I think I'm gonna get some sound effects going, some gothic sound effects. And so every time we say Northanger Abbey, I think I might insert a thunder clap and just see. - It's a good idea. - Yeah. - Just to bring the atmosphere. Okay, so for normally at this point, we talk about why a book is a classic, but actually I want to expand that question. What is it that Austin is doing, not only in this book, but in these early books that she writes, sense and sensibility and pride and prejudice, that is so revolutionary, that is so different, that means that Austin today is still loved as much as she was at the time when most of her contemporaries have been forgotten. - I don't know if the reason that the lady was wearing the Penguin Classics Jane Austen t-shirt this morning was that she recognizes Jane Austen as a. Vital literary innovator, but Jane Austen was a vital literary innovator and even though she moves very far from Northanger Abbey In those other books in Pride and Prudence and Sense and Sensibility The way that she moves away from Northanger Abbey is to move into a very recognisably realist mode where everything that's happening in the book is Highly plausible and it's told through the kind of ordinary details of daily life. The thing that is so important about Northanger Abbey is that we can see how she's actually melding together, blending together two quite distinct traditions in English writing. One is the Gothic and Gothic novels which were huge in the laterated century. Gothic novels were about Big emotions. They were about Overwrought feelings, overwrought storylines, people murdering their wives, people hiding bodies in Tarsals, that was what the Gothic was about and people were completely obsessed with it and at the same time There was this other strain in literature, which is you know what we would now call literary realism So stories about people's emotional lives, what in the 18th century were called sentimental narratives or novels of sensibility which were kind of coming to terms with what it was like to be a feeling woman in this world of Marriage of basically domestic politics. So these are the two big strains of writing that are emerging in novels in the 18th century and Jane Austin brings them together What I think makes Austin so extraordinarily brilliant is she realized that if you just push the satire far enough You come out the other side and you get this sort of hyper realism and I think that's more evident in Pride and Prejudice and sense and sensibility actually and when we get to those novels we'll talk about it But with North Anger Abbey What that boils down to is basically that this you know in some ways quite overblown satire on Gothic Actually turns out to be this very perceptive very true recognition about what the Tilney household is really like That's so right and I although I haven't read that much Austin weirdly I have read a lot of other novelists and particularly female novelists from that time so Mariah Ridgeworth and Fanny Bernie and something that became very apparent to me while reading North Anger Abbey Is that it feels to me that this is a book where Austin is leaving behind a lot of the absurdities and excesses and experimentalism of the 18th century novel and those kind of heightened Dramatic situation so she's constantly putting things back down to earth. She's constantly saying you as a reader Might think this is about to happen because that's your experience of books But actually what's going to happen it is a lot more mundane So so in example of that is Catherine Mauland because she loves novels She always thinks when something happens to her in this book because she's gonna have a sleepless night Because that's what heroines do they have sleepless nights. They're up all night worrying and scared and every time Catherine Mauland thinks she's gonna have a sleepless night. She falls asleep immediately into a hog-like slumber She's incapable of staying awake and then is surprised in the morning that she wasn't up all night And it's very funny and it's very real as well and I think that for me feels like something that's happening in fiction for the first time that Jane Austin in making things more realistic or what you call hyper realistic Manages to write books which are actually more engaging and compelling Than all the absurd florid experimental books happening around her. Yeah, I love that and it's exactly true And I want to add something to that which is on the one hand. Yes, she's sort of saying Heroines actually do go to sleep at night heroines wake up and eat a hearty breakfast So she gives it that quality of of realism and at the same time the other part of her genius is She seems to be debunking the Gothic right? She did Catherine Mauland thinks that the room she's in is enchanted she thinks that there's been a murder in the house She thinks that people have left kind of scary and criminating documents and so on but actually It turns out that Catherine Mauland is correct to have these heightened feelings She's correct to think the general till me is up to no good. She's correct to be somewhat skeptical and even suspicious actually of Henry Tillney the the beloved Henry Tillney So although yes, Austin is sticking the knife to Gothic in certain ways She's also paradoxically giving this very ordinary heroine the full spectrum of emotion and psychological insight and Perception that the graphic makes possible so she's sort of doing both You got what's the secret? So I think there's two great secrets in this book The first is that it's written in an age of revolution So Austin's born in 1775 which I think you're going to tell us quite shortly when we do the bio And I'm going to talk about this being an age of revolution You're going to the age of revolution yeah, so you're so you know so she's she's born with the American revolution But the revolution I especially want to invoke as being in the secret of North Anger Abbey is actually the Haitian revolution There's a slave rebellion in Haiti in the 1790s and it's actually led by a formerly and slaved man to San Lever tour The point that I'm making is that there is this not just a kind of revolutionary Fervor in North Anger Abbey but specifically an anti-colonial fervor in the novel She I think by working through these questions of the Gothic is Inviting us to think about these seismic events happening across the globe Where certain systems that we take for granted are being overturned and she's inviting us to look again at seemingly simplistic binaries Like the good British and the terrible French or the worthiness of Protestantism and the awfulness of Catholicism or the the kind of Appropriateness of realism and the and the sort of ridiculousness of Gothic She's asking us to rethink all of these conceptual categories through the lens of massive social political and revolutionary change that's happening worldwide And then the other great secret in this book is gives me a chance to talk about the best essay ever written about Jane Austen Which was written in the early 90s by a critic named Eve Kuzovsky Sedzwick and it's called Jane Austen and the masturbating girl It's a deliberately provocative essay obviously because Jane Austen never writes about masturbating girls But what it is about is this idea that a kind of strain in Austin criticism is to say that Girls like Catherine Mauland are too imaginative are wrong basically and they need to be corrected And that that's sort of what the trajectory of an Austin novel is about and what Sedzwick is saying in in the masturbation essay Is that actually these novels should be understood as moments where women's In a sensibility their refusal to comply with the rules of domesticity of heterosexual marriage and a kind of male dominated society That the novels are deeply digging into this idea of actually quite empowered independent female heroines Who have their own private pleasures that have nothing to do with all of those masculine concerns So it's a brilliant essay and I think that's one of the other secrets in this book And and importantly it just gave you the chance to say the word masturbation twice Yes and you once so for the win I think for me one of the secrets of the book is the way she's subverting ideas of masculinity So in the same way that she's doing something new with the idea of femininity Hence your Rifting about masturbation. I think the other thing here is that she's deliberately showing different examples of masculinity So James Thorpe who's the borish boris Johnson character in the book is very much the source of character who might be a hero in another book Where Henry Tilney the love interest is well groomed he's a metrosexual he is he's really into Muzzlin and mater and fabric he loves fabric and and he surprises Catherine by talking to her great length about fabric and dresses and showing his knowledge of dresses He also claims the novel which was perceived at the time to be a feminine fascination and a feminine hobby He claims it as well and says that he likes novels immensely and they're not just four women And surprises her with his knowledge so she's doing something with gender generally right? She is Let's talk about Austin's bio Okay, so famously after she died at age 41 her her brother Henry wrote a few biographical notes a few years after her death And he wrote that jane ostens life was not by any means a life of event and So this forged the idea that she was essentially quite a boring person who'd led a uninteresting life that wrote these wonderful wonderful novels and at first glances Henry her brother Henry ostens verdict seems correct in Some ways so she's born in Hampshire her father is a country priest in a village called steventon He seems to be an incredibly kind man He's a bit like mr. McCorber and David copperfield in that He he doesn't have much money. He's a priest. He's running a farm He has to turn the house into a boy's school in order to make more income Part of the problem is that he and his wife had seven children and none of them died in infancy and in the 18th century The idea is you just knock out lots of children knowing that half of them are gonna die and they all live They didn't die and so suddenly the ostens have all these children and no means to pay for them Which is why which is why he has to take on all these jobs and is constantly borrowing money And as we know that financial anxiety runs through every single one of Jane ostens novels The the fact he turns a house into a boy's school is really interesting because it means that Jane grows up surrounded by male pupils And there is that tomboy element to her which is the characteristic she gives to Catherine more. Yes. And she very rarely strays from home as a child, so you can see how you can take the Henry Austin, her brother's view that her life isn't very eventful, but as you were implying earlier, we're not just implying, Sophie, telling us, overtly speaking. Her life is actually a life of great events because it is deeply enmeshed with the wider experience of Imperial Britain at the time and the revolutions that are going on around. And she's not just reading about these things in the newspapers. So a critical influence on her life is her cousin, a woman called Eliza Hancock. She's 14 years older than Jane. She's a very romantic figure. She's chic. She's funny. She's happy-go-lucky. She's a bit like Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey. She's born in India. So Jane Austen's cousin is born in India. And it's entirely possible she was the illegitimate child of her godfather Warren Hastings. And Warren Hastings for anyone who's interested in 18th century history is a big figure. He went out and ran the East India Company. But was also a scholar. He's a strangely conflicted person who on one hand was at the absolute pilot seat of Imperial in Devor in India, but was also curiously sensitive to Indian culture and became an expert in Sanskrit. So Eliza Hancock is this very glamorous figure who comes to stay occasionally. She and her mother, because the father died, they are basically financially provided for by Warren Hastings. And they lead a very glamorous life in London and Paris. And when Eliza comes to stay at Steventon, she's full of stories about seeing Mary and Trinetta balls. She marries a Frenchman who owns a shadow and- Pretty good. Which is pretty good. Yes. So she's a lot of stories of glamour and that becomes even more important when the French revolution occurs. And in the end, her husband, I'm going to say his name because I can't pronounce it. And I just wanted to- I was wondering if you were going to go there. It's quite a mouthful. Jean-François Kapil de Foulie. Nice. He is guillotine in the French Revolution. Or guillotine. Or guillotine. So, you know, Jane has this kind of indirect, but very close to her experience of the effect the revolution of the- French rev experience. Yeah, I mean to have a cousin-in-law guillotine is, you know, that's good for a- That's the real deal. Yeah. And also once the wars break out between England and France after the revolution, this actually sucks her whole family into it. Yes. So four of her brothers are involved in the war. Two of them are off-fighting in different parts around the world. One of them runs a militia at home in England. Another one is a military chaplain. So all through the 1790s, as Jane Austen's imagination is forming, the backdrop of this is both revolution and the wars as well. And one of her brothers doesn't he die in the West Indies? Though that's her meant to be her brother-in-law. So her sister Cassandra- That's right, Cassandra is- Is engaged for a man called Tom- Yes. Who dies in the- And that happens shortly before Jane writes Northanger happy. Exactly. And actually just to stop on that for one second, I was saying a minute ago that one of the things I think Austen's doing in Northanger happy is interrupting this binary between the enemy of the French and the glorious heroism of the British. You know, Austen is known as a kind of conservative, a Tory, a sort of pro-British kind of writer. But actually, I think she would have known for example that the British were trying to take over French West Indian colonies, including Sandom Ying or Haiti. That was why the British were in the West Indies at the time. And the point I'm trying to make is that Jane Austen, I think, is in very subtle ways, alerting us to the fact that British imperialism is not a particularly good thing. It's driven with violence, it's driven with a history of enslavement. Their family became famously abolitionist and so on. And all of that, I think, is- Just the seeds are being sown in Northanger happy. Yes. So- So one way in which her brother Henry Austen is wrong in calling her life un-eventful is this backdrop of revolution and war. Another way is just the mere fact of being a middle class woman from the sort of country gentry in the 1790s. The stakes are incredibly high because if you're going to lead any sort of life, you need to get married. And so when you're in your 20s, life is not un-eventful. You are in this dilemma of is somebody going to marry you or not. And so for Jane Austen, things which seem to be seemingly un-eventful are fraught with drama. Her hercystic Sandra gets engaged. Jane doesn't and she's in her early 20s. She has a very intense flirtation with a man called Tom LaFrey who briefly is a fixture on the Hampshire ball scene. And the problem is that because Jane's father had seven children, he hasn't got any money to give Jane Austen. And so Tom's family maneuvers him away from Jane Austen. And it's very tragic. So this love affair is snuffed out and he's maneuvered away by his family. And Jane's letters from the time this whole incident is running through them and the stakes are incredibly high and stressful. I've always been very drawn to the Tom LaFrey story. LaFrey ends up Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. So he actually does make good. And he said late in life that he was in love with Jane Austen. Yes, he did. And he is obviously a model for Henry Tilney and North Hanger Abbey because one of the things we do know from a surviving letter is that once when they were together they had a long conversation about Tom Jones, Henry Fielding's novel. Yes, which I love. And so Tom LaFrey, like Henry Tilney, loves novels, which are supposed to be a woman's domain. And the idea is that by even talking about Tom Jones, which Sophie as you and I know is a very, very, very novel. Very promise, enormous amounts of promiscuity, extramarital sex. And so for them, for Jane and Tom to even be talking about this book was a kind of socially acceptable way for them to be talking about sexuality for stop. Yes, yes, that's a really great point. So the final thing again, which I think makes it very difficult to describe her life as unventful is her growing capability as a writer and her imagination. Yes. And she was a pretty good writer. And a book is an event Sophie. Yes. And all through her teams, she's writing these proto novels, which are all quite famous in Austin's scholarship, love and friendship and love and friendship because she makes this spelling mistake in the title. However, she makes these early books by her. They're a big surprise for people who love Austin because they're very racing. And Austin's mature novels are quite restrained. But Lady Susan and love and friendship are all about promiscuity and young people behaving very badly. Exactly. And she clearly, for some reason in her early 20s, makes this creative leap that we've been talking about in this episode, where she decides that by keeping more rooted to real life, by being less dramatic, a novel in fact becomes more engaging and more compelling. Yes. Well, that's her brilliant move, isn't it? And as you say, we see from the juvenile that she wasn't afraid to kind of go there. There's there's lots of sex and violence and huge amounts of death and destruction of all kinds. Lots of taboos get crossed in the in the early writing. And the insight is to put a lid on it, only let it appear around the edges of the really major writing actually makes it more powerful. So to get to Northanger Abbey, there's just a couple of things that seem to prompt this book. And it is that a much loved cousin Jane Williams dies in 1798. And at this time, because Jane Austen was still very young, most of her writing, she's sort of doing for family pleasure. She reads them aloud to the family. And Northanger Abbey of all her books is the one that feels most written for a domestic circle. For it seems to be the book that's most written just to delight friends and family. Yes. And imagine that the family would have got the jokes. And the idea is that she wrote it as a bit of a pick me up for the family off of this tragic event. Yes. The other thing, of course, is the mania for Gothic novels, which at that moment in the 1790s with Anne Radcliffe is going, I mean, it's like Taylor Swift. Yes. And so it's ripe for satire. Yes. And in fact, Jane Austen's one of her mother's cousins, who was known as Aunt Cook, published a Gothic novel in 1799. There's a Gothic house and a false bottomed chest and beds carved with frightful faces. And so it seems to be that Jane is not only mocking the Gothic novel as a genre, she's also mocking her aunt Cook, who had just published one. And just actually to invoke Age of Revolution again, as we so love to do. So Mr. Zubid Udolfo, the kind of high watermark of the Gothic was published in 1794. That's the same year that the terror is escalating to its highest point in France. If you remember, John T. when we did our episode on Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, we spoke about Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Walstoncraft, who was living in Paris at the time through the terror. She wrote vindication of the rights of woman at around about the same time. So it's this period of literary fervor and literary experimentalism and Austen's really kind of getting in on that action here, I think. And we did promise a ax killer. Yeah, we haven't seen him yet. Yeah. So we're going to do him. There is a local aristocrat who as a boy attended Jane Austen's father's boarding school. It was actually just before Jane was born, but as a boy he was sent off there, but had to be removed because he was so odd and strange. He also had a terrible stutter. And so another one. So one of the secrets of the secret life of books out of podcast is the central role that stuttering has to not only many of the great writers, but many of the stories surrounding him. Anyway, he became Lord Portsmouth, so that's the name we'll call him. He inherited this local mansion called Hersborne Park in 1799. The Austen's knew him and Jane knew him. He was very odd and sadistic and his brothers forced him to marry a much, much older woman who was past childbearing age to ensure that one of them could inherit. He was obsessed with death and he used to physically beat his servants himself. And his hobby was going to slaughter houses and asking to take the axe to kill the pigs and the cows. And as he would do it, as he would hit them with the axe, he would say, "Serves you right. Serves you right." He was quite unpleasant. He was really unpleasant, but also clearly deeply traumatized from the dysfunctionality of the English aristocracy. Obviously. And your implication is that he is the model for General Tilney in Northinga Abbey. Well, there is a theory that as well as General Tilney and Northinga Abbey itself being inspired by the tropes of the Gothic novel, there is also a real life influence happening right nearby, which is Lord Portsmouth and Hersborne Park. And yet another reminder, actually, that violence, all kinds of violence, revolutionary violence, racial violence, domestic violence, it's always in the mix with Austen. It's never far from the surface. And yet she doesn't do it explicitly. So if she wanted to write a Gothic story about and a kind of sadistic aristocratic axe killer, she knew one. It was right there. But she decides that that is not the stuff of fiction we've been. Yes. So that's the leap of a genius, isn't it? It is. Okay, Sophie, take us into the book. So the beginning of the book is about novels. It's a novel about novels. It's meta. Austen's right, getting us to think about what she's doing in the hishi of the novel. So here's the opener. No one who had ever seen Catherine Maul and in her infancy would have supposed her born to be Anne heroin. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard, and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable independence besides two good livings, and he was not the least addicted to locking up his daughters. She was a great one for an opener, Jane Austen. She does a great, and she does not mess about. No, it's just straight in. This is what you need to know. Let's get going. Yeah. Anything is that Catherine Maul and is a great heroine. She's delightful. She's charming. She's from a kind of upper middle class family, but she, and she makes a good thing of it, Catherine Maul and she does. But by completely subverting the idea of what a heroin is. So one of the things Austin is also doing in that opening is telling us that this is a book about ordinary life. Yes. She's setting up this tension between the heightened world of novels and life as it is. So Jane Austen describes her in this way. She had a thin, awkward figure, a salo skin without color, dark, blank hair and strong features, so much for her person and not less unpropicious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boys plays and greatly preferred cricket, not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dorm else feeding a canary bird or watering at Rosebush. Anyway, so Jane Austen is telling us this person does not appear to be a heroine. She's not particularly imposing in appearance. She's a tomboy incidentally, all these qualities, the sort of plainness and the tomboy behavior, a qualities that Jane Austen herself had. Isn't it a great little glimpse of Austin's early life, playing cricket with her brothers, you know, refusing to feed a canary, which by the way happens in Tom Jones, referring back to Austin's conversation with. Nice reference. Thanks, Tom LaFroy. And looking a bit salo with dark, blank hair, Catherine of course becomes very pretty. So by the time she goes to bath, everyone thinks, "Oh, what a pretty girl." So she's telling us early on that this is a novel about novels and she's telling us it's about ordinary life or to some extent about ordinary life rather than the tropes of people. And she's defending the novel, you know, so the novel has come under a great deal of attack as being a trivial form, as being untrue to real life, not as important as history and so on and so on. And there's this great moment early on where Jane Austen kind of personally, or Jane Austen's narrator, personally intervenes into the narrative and she does this riff about what novels are. She says, "It's commonly the case that a young lady will say, 'Oh, I'm only reading a novel,' when she lays this as the quote, when she lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame. It's only Sicily or Camilla or Belinda, which were Bernie's novels. Or in short, only some work 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. And that's Austen's defence of the novel and it's a fantastic defence and a much needed defence because there's this gap to system of fiction in the 18th century, this anxiety that reading fiction will trivialise you, will corrupt you and is actually not really for the educated or the kind of thoughtful person. And Austen's jumping in and saying, 'No, that is not the case.' It's such a striking section that big where Austen weighs in and makes this wonderful defence of the novel. So after the setup, what happens is there are some rather benign elderly neighbours who have a lot of money and they decide they're going to the town of Bath, which is a spa town, to take the waters for treatment and they decide to take Catherine Walland along as well. We should talk about Bath for a moment. Yes, they are now. They're now. Bath was the kind of magelloof of the 18th century. It was where young people went to meet other young people to get married, have romances and affairs and the older people would go and do the expensive spa treatments. Exactly. And it was sort of a newly invented holiday destination. And it's interesting that in North Angerabie, Austen users Bath basically is a sort of comic setting. Catherine is there, she does all the obvious bath like things, she goes to the pump room, she goes to the assembly rooms, she kind of walks up and down that main street, whatever it's called, the chresn, possibly. She goes full bath. So let's introduce some of the other characters who come in now. The first person she really meets in Bath is Henry Tellney. She, Jane Austen brings him in quite earlier as a character. Yes, and so you mentioned that Henry Tellney is a metrosexual. He's a man's gaper. Read us a bit of Henry Tellney's dialogue, which one are you going to go for? Well, right from the moment they meet, they're introduced at a place in Bath called The Lower Rooms, which is like a public meeting space where young people can meet members of the opposite sex, or same sex, and how. And she's, she's introduced by this master of ceremonies, whose job is basically to introduce young people to Henry Tellney. He comes from a land-owning family, but he's a younger sibling, and so he's going, he's going down to clergyman route. So he is a clergyman, but in that 18th century way, which means he's completely unreligious. Yes, it's, it's just a sort of job you do. Yeah. And but right from the start, he's not at all like we are expecting a love interest to be, and he's very teasing and funny. So they meet and have this very banal conversation, the kind of conversation you have when you're introduced to somebody in a public space. And suddenly very early on, he has enough, and he interrupts her and says, I have hibitoo been very remiss madame in the proper attentions of a partner here. I've not yet asked you how long you have been in Bath, whether you were ever here before, whether you have been at the upper rooms, the theatre, and the concert, and how you like the place altogether. I've been very negligent, but are you now at leisure to satisfy me in these particulars? If you are, I will begin directly. So he's having a joke and say, are you ready for me to do the absolute standard boring conversation? And Catherine rises to the challenge of this flirtation. And she says, you need not give yourself that trouble, sir. No trouble. I assure you, madame, then forming his features into a set smile and effectively softening his voice. He added with a simple air, have you been long and bath madame about a week, sir, replied Catherine, trying not to laugh. It's lovely. It's lovely. It's really fun. Yeah. And so then Catherine sort of BFF shows up who she's only just met Isabella Thorpe, who is pretty and glamorous, very into clothes. She's quite flighty. She also loves reading gothic fiction. That's actually their bonding point, Catherine and Isabella. And we sort of realized from the very outset that Isabella Thorpe is a gold digger. She wants to make a good match. She's out to find a wealthy husband. And at first, she settles on Catherine Mauland's brother, James, but ultimately she ditches him and actually takes up with Henry Tillney's brother, Fredrick, who himself is quite a rake and throws Isabella Thorpe over. So she sort of gets her come up and says, but Isabella Thorpe is, you know, she's a TikTok girl, she's an Instagram girl. From the early 19th century, the late 18th century, she says, "Dear creature, how much I am obliged to you, when you've finished you Dolpho, we will read the Italian together," which was another Gothic novel. "And I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you. Have you indeed had glad I am? What are they all?" I will read you their names directly, here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenback, Claremont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those were last to some time, yes. Pretty well, but are they all horrid? Are you sure they are all horrid? So, Catherine's brother James suddenly turns up, Bica Incidents, from Oxford, and he's come with his best friend who also Bica Incidents, is Isabella Thorpe's brother, John. And I have a soft spot for John Thorpe. He's a terrible hooray henry. Yes, yes. And Jane Austen hates this type of person. I mean, he's a familiar time. He's wonderfully familiar and he's crushingly boring and you can't help but sort of feel bad for him and hope he gets a nice girl in the end, which I think he probably will. The infuriating thing about him is he gets in the way of Catherine's flirtation with Henry Tilney because James Thorpe takes a fancy to Catherine himself and because he's so thick, skinned and borish, cannot pick up on the fact she's completely uninterested in him, but also dominates her and every time they go out to a ball, he insists on being her only dancing partner for the night. Yeah, I'm actually going to, or you read a little tiny bit of John Thorpe because his voice, it shows us that Jane Austen is just absolutely spot-art. She mixes it up later in her career, but in this early piece of writing, she's got a pitch perfect year for dialogue. And he is absolutely bullying the club. So, yeah, so Jane Austen writes, "All the rest of his conversation, or rather talk, began and ended with himself in his own concerns. He told her of horses which he had bought for a trifle and sold for incredible sums of racing matches in which his judgment had infallibly foretold the winner of shooting parties in which he had killed more birds than all his companions together and described to her some famous days sport with the Foxhounds in which his four-sitants, Gil in directing the dogs had repaired the mistakes of the most experienced Huntsman." Yeah, it doesn't really go as nuts, I'll read it. Yeah, he's wonderfully ghastly. Yeah, but I'm sure he's going to find someone lovely to marry. Yes, he will, a nice loan. Yeah, what's her name going to be? Camilla. Camilla. It'll be one of those kind of lationate, lationate, slowing it. Yes, yes. Apologies to anyone we've ever met in our lives. With any of those names. Yeah. We might have to edit one or two of them. No, I think we stick with it. Okay. We're going to do it and just see what happened. All right. We'll watch the listener, this does just drop off, drop like flies. Yeah. The campaign by the Camillas of the World to boycotts the secret life of books. Yeah, it's going to go viral, actually, on TikTok. Have you noticed by the way that I'm obsessed with TikTok, although I've never looked at it? I know. I think it's, I think that's why I'm obsessed. I think that's why you're obsessed. Yes, it's my romance of the forest. Yes, it is. Yes. And, and John Forbes in complete contrast, of course, with Henry Tellney, who loves fabrics and girls' dresses and talking about novels. And we talked a bit about Henry Tellney's relationship with Catherine earlier and how Henry, it doesn't really have any sort of desire for her. He loves sort of telling her about things. There's a kind of wonderful scene where he gives her a long lecture about art, history and perspective. And she sort of is completely fascinated by what he's saying. And he's delighted at how interesting she finds him. Which is, of course, another of, another Austin moment, isn't it? Because we're, we're invited to laugh at John Thorpe with his ranting on about Foxhunting and shooting and all that stuff. And ostensibly we're supposed to side with Henry Tellney, but actually he boars on just as much as John Thorpe. And the astute reader, the careful reader, supposed to notice that. But he's a boar in the way that Catherine wants him to be. Yes. And at least John Thorpe has passion. Yeah. And I want to ask you, Sophie, that if you're writing a book like this in which at the heart of it is a romantic interest, every piece of wisdom around such books is to two characters have to be incredibly in love with one another. And, and rather compelling. And Jane Austen absolutely subverts this because Henry Tellney, who is the love interest, isn't very interested in Catherine at all. I mean, he does marry her in the end. But it's not for any great romantic reason. Yes. And so his kind of dispassionate nature takes a lot of the heat out of the romance. And therefore out, out of the novel. And why would Jane Austen do that? You know, I think Jane Austen is constantly experimenting with the kinds of dynamics that push people into marriage. So here it's that Catherine is naive and innocent. But also sort of has a has a good eye for what's going to kind of work for her. Like it's obvious that Henry Tellney actually is kind of a good match for her. Henry Tellney keeps disappearing at the beginning of the novel. She'll meet him for a couple of minutes and then he'll go off somewhere for a few days and then reappear. I think often is dangling the carrot. What is Henry Tellney up to while he's offstage? Estensively it's that they're highly critical and demanding father kind of summons the children back together. But actually he might have a whole lot of other stuff going on. I also think it's interesting to notice that in her next major piece of writing, Pride and Prejudice, which starts out as first impressions, she sort of jumps the other way and has Darcy and Elizabeth like totally attracted to each other. I mean, Darcy just can't stop himself. Right. And that's much more the model of romantic novels for three centuries. Yes. I'm going to ask this and I'm not asking it in a flippant way at all. Do you think he's meant to be homosexual though? I think that sort of queerness is in the mix in this in this novel and Austin is playing with that. She's playing with sexuality in the same way she's playing with the Gothic. She's sort of telling us that it's both and it's not either or. And you know, think about Emma and Mr. Knightley and Emma. It's really complicated to think about the exact nature of their passion. So it's something she's very, very interested in. Is this, you know, why people end up together even when there isn't compelling sexual attraction? You can see that Henry Tellney marries Catherine because she's an ornament as much as anything else or but he's not marrying her for desire. And she's not going to give him any trouble. No. You know, we know that she's an avid novel reader and per my discussion of Jane Austen and the masturbating girl novel reading is a sort of private self enclosed. You just wanted to say that word again. Yeah. That was my last one. You have a dirty mind. You just, I think you're all the one with a dirty mind, my friend. So Catherine Maul and whether we want to speak of the sin of odonism or not, Catherine Maul and likes being by herself pleasurably. And so does Henry Tellney actually? Yeah. We don't really know what's going on and we're not supposed to. Okay. I think we need to get to Norfanger Abbey. I think we've been in Bath long enough. I was struck at the way that North Hanger Abbey does not appear so that the book is called North Hanger Abbey. And I read it on my Kindle and I was at 53% and there was still no North Hanger Abbey. Yes, which is in and of itself a great touch. She often holds back the country house. Doesn't she Pemberley, which is the sort of North Hanger Abbey of Pride and Bridges. This doesn't show up until I reckon Kindle would be at what a good 67% by the time you get to Pemberley. Okay. So finally we do get to North Hanger Abbey and expectations are high because an Abbey is the seat of a Gothic romance. You're expecting something deeply shaded, a bit decrepit, lots of possible ghosts, well, an Abbey. So formally connected to a Catholic church or a Catholic cathedral, a place where monks would have lived. And this is where Gothic novels tend to play out. So you know, Catherine is full of expectation and Henry Tillney teases her about it on the way. Where he does a wonderful wind up and it's one of my favorite Henry Tillney moments where he knows that she loves Gothic novels and that she's clearly exbruiting excitedly on the fact this house is called North Hanger Abbey. Yes. And he's spent several pages, but I'll just summarize it. Yes. The tells it is long, shaggy dog story. And he says what's going to happen to you is what always happens when a young lady is introduced into a dwelling of this kind. And he says she's lodged in a wing of the house on her own. She's taken by an ancient housekeeper, probably called Dorothy through gloomy passages into an apartment that hasn't been used since somebody died. The furnishings are dark and all-nate is a broken loot. A chest that nobody could open. On the third night, a great storm breaks out. One part of the tapestry starts to flap. And you, Catherine, will look behind and discover a secret door which will take you into a series of rooms which contain a dagger, or some drops of blood, a torture instrument, and a cabinet from which you will retrieve a manuscript with the words "O thou whomsoever thou mayest be, into whose hands these memoirs of the wretched Matilda may fall." And at this point Henry Tilney just stops. And she's absolutely on the edge of her seat. And she says what happens? And he goes, "Oh, I don't know. I'm not going to take it." I'm just making it up. Yeah, just having a laugh. No, it's very nice. And of course, it sort of is what happened. So when she arrives at North Hanger Abbey, initially she's very disappointed because it basically, it wouldn't be out of place in, you know, House and Garden. It's a recently renovated, brought back to life country house. The furniture was all in the profusion and elegance of modern taste, the fireplace where she'd expected. The ample width and ponderous carving of former times was contracted to a rum for which was actually a new kind of heating technology, a kind of stove, with slabs of plain, though hats a marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English China, to an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions and the heaviest stonework for painted glass dirt and cobwebs, the difference was very distressing. But to her credit, Catherine's imagination is such that she manages to suppress all this. Yes. And embark on in her mind on a gothic romance. So, so in her room, which she's put into, she becomes obsessed by a large chest in the corner, which she at first can't open, and when she finally dares to open it, it's basically empty, there's a bit of cloth there. And that's a crushing disappointment. Yes. She discovers that Henry Tilney's mother died when he was young, and she becomes completely convinced that General Tilney, who is Henry's father and still alive and at the house, must have murdered her. Yes. Must have murdered Henry's mother. Yes. And she accidentally let slip this theory to Henry himself. Well, it's the most excruciating scene, isn't it? Because she sneaks around in the abbey, and there isn't a reader in the world, I think, who doesn't identify with this scene of sort of being wildly curious about someone's house when you go to visit and having a bit of a snoop around and getting caught. So she goes into the sort of other side of the abbey into the into what would have been Henry's mother's bedroom, her chamber. She's having what Australians call a sticky beak. She is having a sticky beak. That's exactly right. And she's having a sticky beak and trying to kind of see if there's a body left somewhere if there is in the mystery of your dolphin. So she's snooping around in North Hangar Abbey, and she hears footsteps, and Henry Tilney suddenly appears, and she says, well, what are you doing here? And he says, well, this is the quickest way out from the stables. That's what I'm doing here. And he realizes that she's been poking around in his mother's room, and you know, because he's a bright guy who's read lots of gothic novels. He realizes that she must be thinking that she is in the middle of a gothic novel. This is Henry Tilney. If I understand you rightly, you would form the summaries of such horror as I have hardly words to dear Miss Mawland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you 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? Dearest Miss Mawland, what ideas have you been admitting? So it's a brilliant moment, because on the one hand, Henry Tilney is saying what is exactly correct, which is that English realism has replaced the European gothic as a mode. And that if you read realist novels correctly, you will know that none of the atrocities and the horrors and the wild imaginings of gothic fiction are true. And that of course his mother wasn't murdered. She died in actual death surrounded by her affectionate family. However, it turns out that General Tilney is a tyrant and a snob. And I've actually a very cruel man. He's very cruel to Catherine Mawland. He's been very cruel to his children. He was probably very cruel to his wife. And so we're being invited to look back on this statement by Henry Tilney as being Tilney's own lack of understanding of his own situation, his own repressing actually of the extent to which he has been involved in a kind of gothic family romance with this cruel father. And the thing I'm especially interested in about this statement on Henry's part never can hear me sucking my strepsil as I say this. I can smell your strepsil. So I can not only hear you. I've got a waft of, I think, so black current coming across it's delicious. And very soothing. So Henry says, remember that we're English that we're Christians consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable. In principle, he's saying we're not French, we're not Spanish, we're not Roman Catholic. Always European nations who have in the eyes of the British not only had these kind of Barbara superstitions and beliefs that are totally non-tenable, but who are also the kind of imperial enemy. So Austin is quietly reminding us that England's own self-fashioning, its own fantasy about itself as a virtuous Protestant nation, who is only invested in probability and rationality and reasonable conduct is actually not at all the case. And if we look at the English history in any way, we realize that England is just as bound up in the horrors of enslavement of imperialism, of violence, of oppression. And if it's, if it feels like a stretch, I really don't think that it is because it's such an unusual statement that Henry makes here, where obviously supposed to take quite a deep dive in. No, I don't think it's a stretch at all. And Catherine, just to finish where this thought goes, Catherine goes off more to fight and she reflects herself, charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe's works and charming even as were the works of all her imitators. It was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the Midland counties of England was to be looked for. Yes. So, well, she goes off and shamefully correct herself. She pulls herself back and says, Oh, yes, I am English. I am rational. My suspicions have been excessive. They've been fanciful. Medical care for reader of Austin knows that actually Catherine Mollen has been exactly correct. She has. And I think in that quote about the Midland counties, I think there's two things going on. So the one is Jane Austin is claiming this territory as fit subject for the novel. That idea of middleness of the Midland counties of the middle classes, she's claiming that as the substance of her great revolution. So it's a moment of mission statement which and the other thing to your point is that she's saying, you don't need to look to France in the 17th century, which is the setting of so many Gothic novels or the Middle Ages to find the Gothic. You only need to look at how we behave as a society. So general Tillney, who she thinks might have murdered his wife. He hasn't done anything like that. But what he has done is invited Catherine Mollen to his house on completely full principles because as we're about to find out, general Tillney has got it into his head from something that complete idiot, John Forbes told him that Catherine Mollen is due to inherit a large amount of money. And so General Tillney, who's looking to prop up the family estate, decides that he wants to marry Catherine off to to one of his children and invites her to his house on that premise. He's seeking to make a claim on her and use her. And when he then discovers on a trip to London that actually he bumps into John Forbes again, who says in his who Ray Henry way, oh my god, I was completely wrong about Catherine Mollen. I thought she was loaded, but she's actually got no money, which is basically what happens. General Tillney comes back and immediately throws her out the house. And says you can't stay here anymore. And she has to undertake this very dangerous trip back to her family, 90 miles away alone. And so I think to your point, Jane Austen is saying, if you want to look for those themes of the gothic about bondage, about slavery, about captivity, you only need to look at what happens in the English, middle and counties, but it's of a different nature. And it's in our institutions, and in our structures, it's in how we look at marriage, how we look at property and inheritance. So she's reclaiming the gothic and putting it into the domestic space. A hundred percent. And that is what is going to enable her to move into the next series of novels, where she really explores that idea of kind of captivity and oppression, even in the midst of ordinary nurse two or three families in a country village. And having made this point, having come to that very important set of passages we've been talking about, Jane Austen at that moment completely loses interest in her own book. It all wraps up very quickly. So quickly. Catherine Mauland goes home on her own, Henry Tilney, who's discovered what has happened. He was actually away from the house when his father-general Tilney booted Catherine out. So he's followed down and he comes to her home and he apologises and he proposes and then they get married. And that's basically it. And there's a lovely last last paragraph. So Austin is the master of many things including first first sentences and last sentences. And this is the last bit of North Anger Abbey. To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of 26 and 18 is to do pretty well. And professing myself more over convinced that the generals unjust interference. So far from being really injurious to their felicity was perhaps rather conducive to it by improving their knowledge of each other and adding strength through their attachment. I leave it to be settled by whomever it may concern whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward feel ill disobedience. We're going to wrap up and just to say that this is the first Jane Austen we're doing. Next year, 2025 is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen. So we are over the course of next year going to do all her major novels. So for those of you who are Austen fans, keep watching. We're going to come back to Austin. Sophie's very excited. I'm extremely excited. Austin will not be overlooked. So I think we're just going to go straight into our classic wrap-up, Junty. Let's go to the best bit, worst bit. Well, I do love the relationship between Catherine and Henry. Even though it's not particularly romantic at least from his side, it's very funny and their conversations are very funny and there's something very charming about it. And you can see them having a lovely long marriage as well, can't you? They really get on well. So I thought that was the best bit and the worst bit. What? I suppose the question is, does the novel sustain itself once it switches from bath to North Hangarabi, or does it? - Yeah, I think I enjoyed the bath section more of this book. - Yeah, it's interesting. I sort of came back to this novel thinking, oh, it's gonna be a bit crude, it's a bit over-determined with all the themes of kind of Gothic remats and so on. But actually, I found it really clever and sophisticated. Yes, it has a kind of overt crudity to the writing that's not there in the later work. But the way in which she's sought through this idea that actually English realism is saturated with the themes and concerns of Gothic, that's a brilliant insight. - Overrated or underrated for you? - I'm going underrated. - Why does that not surprise? - Well, and it's not surprising, but my reason for going underrated is slightly surprising, which is that I think that as a piece of literary craftsmanship, Northanger Abbey isn't just interesting as early Austin, it is in and of itself a really serious thinking through of what novels can do in a really brilliant, virtuosic way, and that actually part of what is virtuosic about it is its slight clumsiness, is that you can sort of see the edges, you can see the working. I think that's part of the book. It's quite meta in that way. It's quite modernist. - Yeah, I think it's overrated. - To you? - Yeah, I'm very happy to-- - So upset. - I'm very happy to revise this view as we get into our Austin significant anniversary next year, but I don't understand why Austin does have this kind of stature when so many-- I love so many of the other novelists writing at the time who have zero reputation. Austin has this absolutely elevated status when so many other wonderful writers from the age are completely forgotten. And so Northanger, I thought it was delightful, right? I read it and thought it was delightful, but I wasn't reading it thinking, "You know, Austin, in a few weeks, Sophie, we are doing a public event about Shakespeare versus Austin." - Yes. - And-- - Who's better? - Yeah, and for me, I'm very much in the shape. I don't understand why Austin is kind of on that level. - You think you already know the answer, don't you? - Well, I do, but that's going to be a bruise event. - As so often the case with us, John T, we've got some brawling to do. - We do. - On Mike and off. - And on which note, let's switch off the Mike and roll up our sleeves. - You've been listening to the Secret Life of Books. (upbeat music)