Chapter 2 Austen and her "Northanger Abbey"

Jane.Austin was born on December 16, 1775 in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, England.Her father George.Austin is the head pastor of two local dioceses. With two salaries and income from recruiting students, he supports his family of nine.Jane's mother was born into an established family, so even when the Austin family fell into adversity, the family still maintained a middle-class standard of living and social status. The Austin couple have a total of eight children, six boys and two girls, and Jane is the seventh.Jen's older brother James went to Oxford and later succeeded his father in the parish.The second brother, George, was taken care of by special personnel because of his illness, and he was never allowed to reunite with his family.The third elder brother Edward was adopted by a childless relative since he was a child, but he has always been sympathetic to his flesh and blood compatriots.The fourth brother, Henry, also went to Oxford University, and later became Jane's relationship with the publisher.Jane's sister Cassandra is three years older than Jane. Like Jane, she has never married and is Jane's loyal companion.Jane's fifth brother Francis and younger brother Charles joined the British Navy and were eventually promoted to admirals.

The Austenes never had governesses for the two young ladies, nor did they receive much schooling.When Jane was six years old, she went to Oxford girls boarding school with her sister, but it was not because she wanted to study, but because she couldn't live without her sister. (Mrs. Austen had said that if someone ordered Cassandra's head to be cut off, Jane would die with her.) Not long after she started school, Jane fell ill and nearly died.After recovering from her illness, Jane accompanied her elder sister to study at Reading Abbey School, leaving the school forever at the age of nine.When Jane returned home, under the guidance of her parents, she made full use of the five-hundred-volume library at home, read a large number of classical literature and contemporary popular novels, and gradually forged an indissoluble bond with literature.

As early as the age of sixteen, Jane developed a keen interest in writing novels.But in her time, decent people generally condemned novels, and of course it was even more forbidden for women to write novels, so she could only write secretly without telling outsiders.She was sitting in the study, writing the content she had conceived on small pieces of paper, and when she heard someone coming in outside, she hurriedly hid the small papers.Every time she writes a work, she must read it to her family first, and make revisions repeatedly according to their wishes.Around 1796-1797, Jane finished the first draft of her first novel, "Pride and Prejudice," "First Impressions," and her father wrote to a publisher in London, asking to publish the book at his own expense. The result was rejected.Jane was not discouraged because of this, and in the next two years, she completed the first drafts of "Sense and Sensibility" and "Northanger Abbey" successively.

In November 1800, Reverend Austin decided to retire and let James succeed him.The following year, Jane moved to Bath, a famous spa resort, with her parents and sister.During a trip this year, Jane met a young pastor. The two almost fell in love at first sight, and they agreed to meet at a certain place.But when Jane arrives at the meeting place, what awaits her is a tragedy: she receives bad news that her lover has died.Another time later, Jane and her sister went to a friend's house to play. The friend's brother proposed to Jane, and Jane agreed.But at night, Jane changed her mind and left the friend's house in a hurry the next day.Although Jane was never married, she loved her nephews and nieces very much, and these children also loved dear Aunt Jane.

The Reverend Austin died in 1805, and the following year his widow and two daughters moved to Southampton, where they lived with their fifth son, Francis.Three years later, Edward's wife died while giving birth to her twelfth child. Edward was so sad that he asked his mother and two sisters to live in Chorton, Hampshire.Jane has lived in this quiet environment for eight years, and once again aroused her passion for creation.While revising the first three novels and submitting them to the publisher for publication, she created new works.In 1811, Jane published "Sense and Sensibility" anonymously, which was well received, and later published "Pride and Prejudice" (1813), "Mansfield Park" (1814), " Emma" (1815).Unfortunately, however, Jane.Austen's health suddenly deteriorated just as her reputation was rising.In 1817, Cassandra accompanied her to Winchester to recuperate, but the treatment was ineffective, and she passed away on July 18th at the age of forty-one.The following year, "Northanger Abbey" and "Persuasion" came out at the same time.

Austen lived in an era when British fiction was at a turning point.In the first half of the eighteenth century, realist novel masters such as Fielding, Richardson, Sterne and Smollett emerged in the British literary world, but by the 1970s, these masters had passed away, and the realism they pioneered Tradition was largely replaced by a new Romantic current of thought.This new romantic trend of thought mainly appears in two forms: one is based on Fanny.A sentimental novel represented by Bernie, and a gothic romance represented by Mrs. Radcliffe.Although these works were all the rage for a while, they finally seemed a bit pale because of their obvious sentimentality and magical color.Because of these works flooding the market, there were no important works of British fiction in the forty years from the 1770s to the first decade of the 19th century.Since 1811, Austen has published six novels successively. These novels have illuminated the affectation of neo-romanticism with its light of rationality, making it lose its place, and thus become the reality of Britain in the 1830s. The arrival of the climax of the socialist novel cleared the way.In the history of English literature, Austin not only played the role of inheriting the past, but also unique in itself, so he was hailed as the incomparable Jane.austin.

The "Northanger Abbey" we introduce here belongs to Austen's early works. The first draft was written in 1798｜1799 and named "Susan".In 1803, the author revised the novel and sold it to a publisher in London, but for unknown reasons it was never published.Until the second year after the author's death, that is, in 1818, by Henry.Austen mediated, and the novel was published. Like the author's other five works, "Northanger Abbey" is a romance novel, however, unlike other works, in addition to love disputes, the novel also runs through the satire of Gothic novels from beginning to end.Therefore, this can be described as a dual-theme novel.

The heroine of the novel, Catherine.Moran is a pastor's daughter. She came to Bath, a spa resort with the squire Allen and his wife. At the ball, she met and fell in love with the young pastor Henry.Tierney.At the same time, she also met another young man, John.Thorpe.Thorpe mistakenly thought that Catherine would be the heir of Mr. Allen's property, so he coveted it and made up his mind to marry Catherine.Thorpe is naturally fond of bragging and lying. In order to increase his social status, he reported the property of the Moran family to Henry's father, General Tierney. General Tierney believed it and encouraged his son to pursue Catherine.When the family left Bath, he invited Catherine to their home in Northanger Abbey, treating her like family.Later, when Thorpe's extravagant hopes of pursuing Catherine were shattered, he became angry with embarrassment, and quickly overturned all the previous praises of the Moran family, and then derogated the Moran family, saying how poor her family was.General Tilney once again listened to the slander, thinking that the Moran family was poor, drove Catherine out of the house angrily, and ordered his son to forget her.But the two young lovers did not give in. After some twists and turns, they finally became husband and wife.

Obviously, the author's description of Thorpe and General Tierney in this way is a ruthless criticism of the concept of money and family status. While in Bath, Catherine was avidly reading Lady Radcliffe's Gothic novel Udolph's Mystery.Later, when she heard that the general had invited her to visit Northanger Abbey, she couldn't help being ecstatic, thinking that she could finally go to the ancient temple, go through dangers, and taste the thrill of the heart.In fact, Northanger Abbey is just a comfortable and convenient modern residence, which only retains the old antique name.But after Catherine moved in, she embarked on an absurd adventure in the monastery by virtue of all the horrible phantoms that Gothic novels aroused in her mind.When she entered her bedroom for the first time, she saw a big wooden box next to the fireplace. She suspected that there was some mystery in the box, and finally opened the box with great difficulty, only to find that there was only a white sheet inside.

Before going to bed at night, she suddenly discovered that there was a large cabinet in the room. After searching for a long time, she finally found a roll of paper in the secret cabinet. Look, it's a stack of laundry bills!Catherine hit a wall twice, and though she was ashamed, she didn't learn from it.On the contrary, her legendary fantasy is still escalating further.When she visited the monastery, she suddenly surmised an unspeakable horror, sometimes suspected that General Tilney had killed her wife, and sometimes suspected that he imprisoned her in that secret room, so she started a detective activity in the monastery Later, because Henry ran into her, listened to him explain the truth, and criticized her for being suspicious, she woke up from the dream of the Gothic legend, and immediately made up her mind: no matter what she judged or did in the future, she would be very rational.

Here, Austen gives her heroine a sobering shot, and a genuine sarcasm of gothic horror. By the way, it should be pointed out that Austen does not completely deny Gothic novels or sentimental novels.In her opinion, although these two types of novels have negative factors such as artificiality and divorce from reality, they contradicted the overly serious atmosphere in the literary world at that time, and played a certain positive role in breaking the shackles of classicist dogma. Therefore, the author departs from the development clue of the story in the fifth chapter of the novel, challenges the traditional view of novels, and praises the new novel with passionate language. All in all, only those works in which the power of intellect is at its fullest and, consequently, the most thorough understanding of human nature, the apt description of its various forms, and the overflowing wit and humour, all Shown in the most exquisite language. Using the most exquisite language, showing the most thorough understanding of human nature, full of wit and humor everywhere, this is not only the author's incisive insights into the novel, but also an appropriate summary of her own works.Like the author's other novels, "Northanger Abbey" is also a comedy full of humor, which can be seen not only in the comic handling of the plot, but also in the comic characters of certain characters. Catherine is an immature and ignorant girl. As her protector, Mrs. Allen should give advice everywhere, but she completely ignores her responsibilities as an elder. She has no interest in other things except her own clothes. She and Thorpe When the wives meet, one shows off her clothes, the other praises her daughter, the two mouths move together, neither of them want to talk but don't want to listen.Mrs. Thorpe's eldest daughter, Isabella, is a pretty girl, but hypocritical and scheming.She said she hated money, but in her heart she wanted to marry a rich husband.When she got engaged to Catherine's brother James, she was so excited that she couldn't sleep all night, saying that even if she was in charge of millions of pounds and ruled the world, James was her only choice.Later, seeing the richer Captain Tierney courting her, she abandoned James with complacency.In the end, Captain Tierney left her, and she actually had the face to write to Catherine in an attempt to rekindle the old relationship with James. These women, together with the aforementioned Thorpe and General Tierney, constitute the comic group in the novel.Compared with the heroine Catherine, although these characters don't have much ink, they are all written with flesh and blood and come alive, adding endless fun to the novel. Austen writes novels, and if her greatest joy is creating characters, her forte is writing dialogue.Her dialogues are so vivid and full of personality that you can hear them and see them, so it is no wonder that critics often compare her with Shakespeare.For example, Isabella always likes to sing high-pitched words of advocating friendship, loyalty and love, but before she speaks, she always reveals the hidden feelings in her heart.Once, she said to Catherine: My requirements are very low, even the meager income is enough for me.If people really love each other, poverty itself is wealth.I hate the luxurious life.I don't want to live in London under any circumstances.It is charming enough to have a hut in a remote village.After the hype confession, he added another epilogue: there are several small and lovely villas near Lisman.Sneaking from the hut to the villa, she revealed her true feelings of admiration for prosperity and wealth.Wonderful dialogues like this abound in novels. It is no exaggeration to say that reading Austen's novels can indeed enable readers to recognize characters from their words. Most of Austen's novels are based on a village with three or four families, and most of them are about the marriage of a college girl. Some people think that the life is narrow and the body is trivial.However, who likes two-inch tooth carvings and who thinks it is too small?Austen writes novels precisely in the spirit of creating two-inch ivory carvings. When we read her works, we should also ponder them as carefully as we appreciate two-inch ivory carvings. In this way, we will find a comprehensive and meaningful Endless world of art.