The Reverend Susan Tiffany recommends Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
The human mind is a wondrous thing. It helped humanity discover the surface of the moon, plumb the depths of the oceans, and design buildings that reach more than 2,000 feet into the sky.
The brain’s functions are also perplexing. Remember when you were a child how this amazing organ played tricks on you? You went to bed one night convinced there was a monster in your room. You knew it was real. You saw its shadow move across the wall. You heard its low-pitched growl as it prepared to rear up and snatch you from the comfort of your bed. You were so convinced of the monster’s existence that you reported this nighttime horror to anyone who would listen.
Sometimes the tricks played by our childhood brains remain deep-seated parts of our personality into adulthood. We’re convinced there’s something sinister going on in the house next door. We’re convinced there’s something sinister going on in our own home.
Such was the state of affairs in the mind of Catherine Morland, the heroine in Jane Austen’s satiric novel Northanger Abbey. This naïve young woman with an overly sensitive imagination fancied herself as a budding Gothic novelist and set herself up as the heroine of what she determined would be a dark and thrilling romance. She had been fortuitously invited to Northanger Abbey, the perfect setting to find material for her novel. During her visit to this grand yet forbidding ancestral home of her suitor Henry Tilney, Catherine pictured horror around every corner, eventually becoming convinced that Henry’s father murdered his wife.
Austen wrote Northanger Abbey in 1798. It was her satiric response to the Gothic novels craze that swept across England. But Austen’s book doesn’t simply provide a few hours of escape. When we visit Northanger Abbey, we’re accepting an invitation to be swept into another world, allowing a refreshing burst of oxygen into our brains.
We read Austen’s work not just for the sake of entertainment, of which there is an abundance in her witty depictions of gentry life in Regency England. It’s Austen’s use of language that bathes us in beauty as we wander through her astute observations about relationships especially marriage. We come away from this era of polite manners and civility (that often served as facades for bitterness and resentments) learning something about ourselves. We’ve become more compassionate for people who aren’t like us, and more curious about different cultures, and different eras. We’ve been indoctrinated to other ways of seeing, thinking, and imagining the world. And as we reluctantly leave Northanger Abbey the realization hits us that we were willingly imprisoned there by Austen’s brilliant humor, plotting and character development.
So, take a plunge today into the rich and evocative world of Austen’s Abbey and see if you don’t come out of 19th century England with a fresh view of 21st century America.