Extracts from Northanger abbey

[Albus Dumbledore]

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[Newcomer]

This is an extract from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Chapter 5. In this extract the author talks directly to the reader. Is she defending the novel? Or what does she mean? Could someone please help me analyse it?

"I am no novel-reader--I seldom look into novels--Do
not imagine that I often read novels--It is really
very well for a novel." Such is the common cant.
"And what are you reading, Miss--?" "Oh! It is only
a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her
book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.
"It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; 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. Now, had the same
young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator,
instead of such a work, how proudly would she have
produced the book, and told its name; though the chances
must be against her being occupied by any part of that
voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner
would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance
of its papers so often consisting in the statement of
improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics
of conversation which no longer concern anyone living;
and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give
no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it."

I hope that the following will provide a partial answer to your question.

Background
It may be useful to keep in mind some background material before attempting an analysis of the passage you requested. The 19th. century early critics, Whately, Macaulay and Lewes compared Austen to Shakespeare in powers of characterization. One is struck with the choice of words that like musical notes complement each other, by the compound structure of sentences, of subordinate clauses that function not by grammatical conjunctions but rather of ideas. Thus one is left with an impression of a musical phrase, not just of masterful prose.

The comparison to Shakespeare suggest that Austen's novels can be grouped into categories of tragedy - Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, of comedy- Pride and Prejudice, Emma and experimental - Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park, that fits neither of the previous. Northanger Abbey is generally viewed as a satire on the wildly popular Gothic novel, typified by The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe. Concurrently she inserts in the plot of Northanger Abbey, a discourse on the Romantic novels, Cecilia, Camilla of Fanny Burney and the more socially scandalous Belinda, of Maria Edgeworth's, dealing with the the abolition of slavery and, the depiction of conjugal love in interracial marriage.

Fanny Burney posed the question, “a successful novelist or playwright”, was anywhere near as "respectable as being a servant to a Queen.", thus providing an insight of how the pre-Victorian society viewed the status of the novel. Without being a polemicist, In Northanger Abbey Jane Austen appeals to the female reader for support of status of the novel.

Analysis
The passage that you quoted is preceded by - “friendship between Catherine and Isabella .... shut themselves up, to read novels together.... Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, ... Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried....

This establishes the narrative voice of the author, the observer-narrator view is descriptive, subjective but at the same time impersonal, as in the phrases, “Such is the common cant.” and “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, ....” etc. The non-focalised voice forms the framework for the passage, however, very importantly Austen interposes the focalized voice, as in “ I am no novel-reader--I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels” and "And what are you reading, Miss--?" , like a gemstone in a setting providing the equivalent of visual fire to the impersonal descriptive.

Conclusion
The passage in Northanger Abbey functions on many levels, typically of Austen, as a polemic on the status of the novel, indirectly on the emotionalism of the Romantic novel, as in the references to Cecilia and Camilla and as a prognostication of the Augustan restrain of her style. It asks that the reader bring the resources of a wide aesthetic experience in understanding Austen's work.

Virginia Woolf in “Jane Austen,” in Collected Essays writes, “To begin with, the stiffness and the barreness of the first chapters prove that she was one of those writers who lay their facts out rather badly in the first version and then go back and back and back and cover them with flesh and atmosphere. How it would have been done we cannot say – by what suppressions and insertions and artful devices … [W]hat pages of preliminary drudgery Jane Austen forced her pen to go through. Here we perceive that she was no conjurer after all. Like other writers, she had to create the atmosphere in which her own peculiar genius could bear fruit. Here she fumbles; here she keeps us waiting. Suddenly she has done it; now things can happen as she likes things to happen. “

[Albus Dumbledore]

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[Newcomer]

What you are asking for is an understanding of the secondary sources, the relationship of the references used by Austen to the theme of the novel. Even if one was to give such particulars, you would not gain the necessary understanding, for this is a very subjective judgment. There's not a single answer. For this you will have to read The Mysteries of Udolpho as well as gain some familiarity with the cultural assumptions of the late 18th. century English gentry. So you see that there is no easy answer to your question.