Goth girl
"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
Northanger Abbey
Myrna asked in a recent comment, "You don't really dislike Northanger Abbey, do you?" Thanks, Myrna. You're not the only one wondering about this, so I should probably clarify. It seems I've earned a reputation as a Northanger Abbey hater because of a line in austenland: "Sure, Jane had first read Pride and Prejudice when she was sixteen, read it a dozen times since, and read the other Austen novels at least twice, except Northanger Abbey (of course)." Though I didn't anticipate this reaction, I can understand why people might think I'm bashing the book, so let me explain.
The truth is, I very much like Northanger Abbey. I took a class in college where we studied gothic romances, sentimentalism, and the emergence of realism as the dominate literary style. It was fascinating, my favorite literary theory class of all time. Northanger Abbey is a parody of gothic romance, a very popular style of novel in Austen's day. As a general rule, I'm a big fan of parody. I also love Austen and highly enjoy gothic romance, so all that adds up to a book that is quite my cup of tea. It doesn't hold my heart as securely as Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice for sheer reading pleasure, but I'm quite fond of it.
So why that line in austenland? Because if you were to take a broad poll of non-scholarly readers of Austen, those who read her for fun, the one book that most of them won't have read or else won't have enjoyed as much as the others is Northanger Abbey. (Quite often I find they will have started it but never bothered to finish.) I am not Jane Hayes, my main character. As much as some of her personality intersects with mine, we're very different. Just as I am quite different from Ani, Enna, Razo, Miri, Sileph, Ungolad (let's hope, anyway)...And I'm also not the authoritative voice of the austenland narrator, who bandies about opinions I don't always agree with. I didn't write this book in order to subject the reader to my personal opinions. I wrote it...well, so I could laugh. The line was supposed to be funny.
Now my mind is racing ahead, wondering what I can write in my next book to outrage large special interest groups...
"Everyone knows," said Susan as she unloaded the groceries, "that Shakespeare is a fraud and a poser. I sprinkled some vinegar on my copy of The Tempest and used it to clean my windows."
"Good call," said Charlotte. "Are we going out to eat at The Olive Garden tonight? You know how I love supporting those chain restaurants. Let's drive all the ma & pa diners out of business."
"High five me on that, sister!"
(P.S. That last bit was a joke.)