Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

I've now read both this and Persuasion, Jane Austen's first and last works, a rather pleasing statistic for me. And it's an interesting contrast to the more mature work in that, regardless of publication date, Austen wrote this in 1799, when she was a mere 25.

This may be less mature, I suppose, but that's a relative term. The novel certainly feels lighter in tone, and written by someone who's had fewer hard knocks. But the wit, and the social commentary, are absolutely there. Austen's prose is always a delight, much though I may suspect, not having read any Georgian Gothic novels of the kind that this novel is to a large extent riffing off, that there just might be rather a lot of allusions I'm not getting.

The novel is a joy to read, with our naive heroine Catherine slowly learning that real life is both tamer and in some ways more socially perilous than the lurid tropes of the Gothic novel.And the final revelations are devilishly clever, revealing that the plot has been rather cleverer than we may have thought all along.

 It's fascinating to see Austen discuss the modes and manners of the minor landed gentry in the 1790s, a slightly earlier time period. Indeed, this book makes the 18th century, which felt so distant in Tristram Shandy, feel rather close. There's even an extraordinary moment where the splendidly pedantic Henry disparages the modern habit of using the word "nice" to mean "pleasant" rather than "exact". Quite right too.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

I'm going to start with a controversial comment: this novel and, I rather suspect the novels of Jane Austen in general, is and are unfilmable. For the plot is not the point. Not even the characters, superbly drawn as they are, are the point. No; the joy of Austen lies in her prose, and her subtle soicial commentary, criticising the social mores of her day with a lightness of touch that just about has plausible deniability.

That was the joy of rediscovering this novel at forty-five, having not appreciated it in my youth. This is not some cosy, Downton Abbey period romantic drama but something far, far deeper, and I strongly suspecxt that anyfilm or television adaptation, or most at any rate, would indeed end up as a mere cosy genre piece, entirely missing the (very) suppressed rage in the authorial voice of the rigid social conventions of Regency England, which are subtly condemned. In a similar vein, it would be anachronistic to call Austen a feminist. Yet gender roles and conventions do not go uncommented on.

Yes, there is a rather pat happy ending. But not one that undoes the pain of six years of unnecessary separation of two people forced to deny their love through the petty respectability and snobbishness of those around them. Lady Russell is an idiot, yes. Mr Elliott is a bounder and a cad. Yet the subtle excoriation of Sir Walter exposes him as the worst of them all, and I love how the ending not-so-subtly implies that such things as baronetcies are worthless. Love is what matters. And that we must all be free to choose whom we love.

Sometimes, a classic novel is every bit as sublime as it's said to be.