Jane Austen parodies the genre of Gothic romance in one of her earliest novels, Northanger Abbey. The heroine, Catherine Morland, is a reader whose enthusiasm is unfortunately misguided. After reading novels like The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe, she sees elements of the Gothic in the events of her everyday life. When she goes to Northanger Abbey, the home of her beloved Henry Tilney, she expects it will have all the excitement and danger of the deserted abbey in The Romance of the Forest, also by Ann Radcliffe. When she finally realizes that her life is not like that of a Gothic heroine, she denounces the Gothic as irrelevant to the lives of real people living in England. It is this passage which seems to outline the goals of the book, and of Jane Austen as a beginning writer. As a contemporary of female novelists specializing in Gothic romance, she decides that something very different is relevant for herself and her readers. Her later novel, Mansfield Park, is an amalgamation of many genres and in the end, can be defined by none; one of these genres, however, is very definitely the Gothic. Mansfield Park is more profoundly a Gothic novel than Northanger Abbey ever is. Although the Gothic is never acknowledged directly, it seems that, contrary to her character’s declaration, Austen has decided that it is indeed a relevant style to depicting the lives of the gentry in England.
The characteristics of Catherine Morland are not those typical of a Gothic heroine. Her qualities are contradictory, at least for the terms in which a literary heroine of the period could be described. She has
"neither a bad heart nor a bad temper; was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house." (Northanger Abbey 2)
There are two sets of qualities, separated by the second semicolon, described in this passage. The two sets of qualities do not necessarily contradict each other, and could probably both be found in one character. However, they seem unlikely to be combined in a traditional Gothic heroine, and certainly are not combined in Fanny Price. In the second half of the passage, she both “hated” and “loved,” and is “noisy and wild.” Her emotions range to extremes, and she lacks the refinement to control them. She is ten years old when described by this passage, but by the end of the novel, she is still only eighteen years old. She is more mature, and this maturity may bring the refinement necessary to control herself, but it is difficult to believe that she destroys the emotions and inclinations so essential to her personality as a child. The moderation implied by the first half of the passage is everything important to a Gothic heroine; it implies modesty, gentleness, kindness, and malleability. The second half of the passage, however, calls into question the accuracy of the first half, and certainly does not depict a modest young woman.
The events of the novel are no more conducive to a Gothic structure than the elements of Catherine’s personality are to making her a traditional Gothic heroine. She spends most of the novel with wealthy friends vacationing in Bath and comes from a family of ten children, where the father “had a considerable independence, besides two good livings” (1). Catherine is a part of a large family, but not a poor one. Any problems between Henry Tilney and herself are quickly resolved. Their engagement at the end of the novel occurs without any great strife on either side. Perhaps it is this lack of struggle in her life that so induces her to long for Gothic influence. When she travels to Northanger Abbey, she is displeased to find General Tilney has added modern apartments to the original structure. The house is clean and orderly, lacking any elements of the Gothic, a deficiency which her imagination soon makes up for. She is unable to avoid the truth for long, however. Catherine believes that General Tilney might have killed his wife, and is found lingering outside her apartments by Henry Tilney. Henry confronts her on the subject and she is mortified by his insight and by her own folly. She realizes that her speculations were completely incorrect, and is embarrassed that Henry is privy to her misjudgment. It is this embarrassment which leads to the declaration mentioned above, when Catherine realizes that her life simply is not like a Gothic novel:
"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. Of the Alps and Pyrenees, with their pine forests and their vices, they might give a faithful delineation; and Italy, Switzerland, and the South of France, might be as fruitful in horrors as they were there represented. [...] But in the central part of England there was surely some security for the existence even of a wife not beloved, in the laws and of the land, and the manners of the age. [...] Among the English, she believed, in their hearts and habits, there was a general though unequal mixture of good and bad." (141)
It is almost an excuse for the presence of the Gothic parody in the novel. Austen becomes one of the “imitators” and Northanger Abbey one of the “charming [...] works.” It is as though Austen has written the parody as an exercise in composition, but uses this passage to specify the real purpose of her work. She does not intend for the novel to be solely defined as a parody of a genre or as a member of that genre, but to be the first of a new genre. It is a novel entirely specific to the spirit of England; it is a Gothic novel prevented from actually being a Gothic novel by cultural limitations. Austen’s novels are romances limited to the often intellectual and often morally-driven world of the English gentry, concerned with family, marriage, and money. The rest of the novel introduces her use of this form, and her passage on the Gothic declares her intentions for using the form in the future. It is in this passage that she addresses the work of her female contemporaries, and indicates that she will not and cannot write the same kinds of works that they do.
Mansfield Park is a novel that is influenced by many genres, but ultimately rejects them all. Although the Gothic is one of these genres, it is not the only one to be considered and dismissed by the author. Surprisingly, Austen takes the new genre she creates in Northanger Abbey, and which she had developed in her two following novels, and overturns that as well. The novel does, however, focus on Austen’s regular subjects, the English gentry, and the ways in which family and marriage operate in their society. Her previous novel, Pride and Prejudice, is a charismatic and romantic comedy of manners. The characters are witty and good-natured, and as near perfect as any of the characters in any of her novels. The plot of the novel is the struggle of the two main characters, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, to become even nearer perfection before they can fall in love and marry. Mansfield Park is a love story as well. Fanny is in love with her cousin, Edmund Bertram, and has been for many years. Perhaps a reader would expect the characters to be similar in many respects to those directly preceding them, but instead, they are very near the opposite. The only qualities they share with Elizabeth and Darcy are intelligence and a general goodness. Otherwise, Edmund and Fanny are puritanical, judgmental, and humorless. Mary and Henry Crawford more resemble displaced characters from Pride and Prejudice, with their wit and liveliness, and at the end of the novel, they are completely disregarded. If they were the main characters of the novel, and if Mansfield Park had the same spirit as its predecessor, Henry would undoubtedly win the heart of Fanny, and Mary would marry Edmund. It would be a happy ending for all involved. When this does not happen, it is a rejection of Austen’s own genre, at least as far as her previous novels suggest that genre to be.
Austen never addresses the influence of the Gothic novel on Mansfield Park as directly as she does in Northanger Abbey, but its influence is felt as strongly and with more relevance to the events of the story. Unlike Catherine Morland, Fanny Price actually is very like a Gothic heroine. She, like Catherine, has “neither a bad heart nor a bad temper; was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny.” She is just as good-natured and good-tempered, although perhaps more saintly. In the description of Fanny’s character, “seldom” and “scarcely ever” would both be replaced with “never,” and “few” with “no.” These modifiers create doubt in the first half of the passage in Northanger Abbey, and it is a doubt amplified by the direct reference to Catherine’s wildness in the second half of the passage. In Mansfield Park, there could be no such doubt about the nature of Fanny’s character, for no modifiers of doubt could ever appear. It is interesting to note that when Fanny is first described, she too is ten years old; however, she is very different from Catherine at that age. She is
"small of her age, with no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty; exceedingly timid and shy, and shrinking from notice; but her air, though awkward, was not vulgar, her voice was sweet, and when she spoke, her countenance was pretty." (Mansfield Park 9)
Fanny is as feminine and shy as Catherine is tomboyish and outgoing. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine’s awkwardness is referred to as an embarrassment. Fanny has no such problem. She may be awkward, but it is not unbecoming, because Fanny is so modest and delicate. This is just as prevalent when she attends her first ball as when she was ten years old: “Young, pretty, and gentle, however, she had no awkwardnesses that were not as good as graces” (250). What is a fault in Catherine is a virtue in Fanny. The power of modesty and femininity is one that the Gothic heroine unconsciously wields, and its presence in Fanny marks her as graced in a way that Catherine is not.
Fanny’s background resembles that of a Gothic heroine in several respects. Her life is not as comfortable as that of Catherine. She, too, comes from a large family. In Catherine’s family, a large family is the origin of intimacy and affection. A greater number of siblings means a greater number of people to love and to be loved by. In Fanny’s family, a greater number of siblings means a greater number of people for her parents to divide their attention among. Poverty and ill-breeding make it even more difficult for Fanny to find happiness in her family. Her mother feels plagued by a “large and still increasing family, a husband disabled for active service, but not the less equal to company and good liquor, and a very small income to supply their wants” (3). Mrs. Price, like Mrs. Bertram, is an indolent woman. If she had married a wealthy man, she would be able to devote her attention entirely to her children and might make each feel individually cared for and loved. However, in poverty, she is also responsible for housekeeping. Her laziness prevents her from giving anything the proper attention it deserves, and so Fanny is neglected. Fanny, like a Gothic heroine, resembles an orphan, although it is the result of poverty and her parents’s disinterest, rather than death, that leaves her in this state. Mrs. Price is pleased when the Bertrams and Mrs. Norris offer to take care of Fanny for her. Fanny, then, is like the orphan adopted by a family almost entirely strange to her, due to the feud in her family that began before her birth.
Once Fanny is living with the Bertrams, she becomes as much like a Cinderella figure as it is possible for a member of the English gentry to be. For her bedroom, she is assigned “the little white attic, near the old nurseries [...] close by the housemaids” (7). Mrs. Norris frequently sends her on errands from Mansfield Park to her house, although she could just as easily do them herself. Fanny’s health is almost unbelievably precarious, and even exertion such as this exhausts her. Mrs. Norris ignores the effect of her tasking, always treating Fanny as a willing servant. More importantly to her status as a heroine, Fanny is always made aware of being a part of the lower class. Sir Thomas Bertram hopes that he will “preserve in the minds of [his] daughters the consciousness of what they are, without making them think too lowly of their cousin; and how, without depressing her spirits too far, to make her remember she is not a Miss Bertram” (8). He succeeds in this. Fanny is always aware that she is inferior to her cousins, although the truth of this assumption is challenged throughout the novel and proved wrong by the Miss Bertrams’s misdeeds at the end of the novel. This awareness contributes to her modesty as a heroine, but also instills something even more important in her. Because she is aware of being lower, she must always be aware of the ability to rise, and of the level of being a “Miss Bertram” as one above her own. In becoming Edmund’s wife, then, she ascends the social ladder as she has always known it, a movement characteristic of the Gothic heroine.
The trials of Fanny’s life are not limited to those experienced because of her family, and they achieve some of the dramatic effect of the Gothic novel. Like Adeline of The Romance of the Forest, Fanny is pursued by a suitor whom she cannot encourage and whose sins are always very apparent to her. Henry Crawford has flirted with both of the Bertram sisters and they have both fallen in love with him. When he falls in love with Fanny and asks her to marry him, she cannot accept him. She is in love with Edmund and, even were she not, knows too well the truth of Henry’s character. When he proposes, she says,
"No, no, no. [...] This is all nonsense. Do not distress me. I can hear no more of this. Your kindness to William makes me more obliged to you than words can express; but I do not want, I cannot bear, I must not listen to such– No, no, don’t think of me. But you are not thinking of me. I know it is all nothing." (273)
This refusal seems very clear. Part of her confusion is based in her modesty; she believes that Henry Crawford, who has seduced and known so many women, cannot possibly have chosen to marry her. But it is also largely based in her dislike of him and her continuing love for Edmund. Like Elizabeth Bennet’s refusal of Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice, it is met with amazement and distrust by the suitor. Henry criticizes her ability to judge the situation properly. He believes that she will either fall in love with him in time, or is too modest to believe her fortune now. He continues to court her. The unwanted suitor is coupled with another element of the Gothic novel, the father figure who betrays the heroine to the suitor. Sir Thomas tricks Fanny into seeing Henry Crawford again, and considers her travel to Portsmouth essentially a banishment during which she will realize why she should marry Henry. When Fanny tells Sir Thomas that she cannot marry Henry, he tells her that she has “shewn [him] that [she] can be wilful and perverse, that [she] can and will decide for [herself], without any consideration or deference for those who have surely some right to guide her” (288). These are qualities to be treasured in a character like Elizabeth Bennet, an independent and intelligent woman so thoroughly a product of Austen’s self-formed genre. They are to be despised in a character like a Gothic heroine, but only if that character is actually making a bad decision. Fanny is not trying to be perverse, but actually senses where the virtue of the situation lies. She is the heroine trapped by a father figure who decides the truth inaccurately and condemns her as being what she is not.
The novel ends happily, with Fanny’s marriage to reward her goodness and a punishment for evil truly fit for a Gothic novel. After Maria has an affair with Henry Crawford, she is rejected by him. Her family refuses to accept her. However, Mrs. Norris refuses to live without her, and still defends her as her favorite. The novel examines two generations of women. In the first, there are the three sisters: Mrs. Norris, Lady Bertram, and Mrs. Price. In the second, there are the three cousins: Maria Bertram, Julia Bertram, and Fanny Price. In both generations, it is the eldest who seems to have the most evil in her. At the end of the novel, both of these evil women are easily disposed of in “an establishment being formed for them in another country– remote and private, where, shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other, no judgment, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment” (424). Maria and Mrs. Norris are cloistered together, living a life of celibacy and mutual discontent. This “remote and private” home is essentially a convent, a staple of the Gothic novel. Catherine Morland believes that the events of a Gothic novel could not possibly take place in England. In Mansfield Park, they do. The movement of the characters to a traditionally Gothic setting in another country integrates England into the action of a Gothic novel, geographically, breaking down the beliefs of Catherine.
Why does Austen decide to reverse her earlier statement and suddenly make the Gothic an integral, plausible, and accepted part of her fourth novel? It is necessary to keep in mind that she does not do this entirely. The importance of other genres in the novel, and the refusal on the part of the author to make Mansfield Park a genre novel as defined by any preexisting genre, prevents the novel from becoming decidedly a Gothic novel. Instead, it seems to be a movement back to Northanger Abbey. She uses the style first rejected in that novel to create a new style of writing, and in not using it as the defining genre of her novel, rejects it along with that new style that emerged in her earliest novel. Rather than subscribing to any one style, Austen is insistently creating and experimenting with her novels, and here, she defies genre. She advocates the ability of the author to use different genres as necessary, but to keep the novel independent from any definition by those genres. The Gothic, then, becomes an approach to experimentalism through attention to a traditional form.
WORKS CITED
Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. New York: Dover, 2000.
