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Chapter VII - Satires on The Novel of Terror
Jane Austen's raillery in Northanger Abbey; Barrett's mockery in
The Heroine; Peacock's Nightmare Abbey; his praise of C.B. Brown
in Gryll Grange; The Mystery of the Abbey, and its misleading
title; Crabbe's satire in Belinda Waters and The Preceptor Husband;
his ironical attack on the sentimental heroine in The Borough; his
appreciation of folktales; Sir Eustace Grey .
A conflict between "sense and sensibility" was naturally to
be expected; and, the year after Mrs. Radcliffe published The
Italian, Jane Austen had completed her Northanger Abbey ,
ridiculing the "horrid" school of fiction. It is noteworthy
that for the Mysteries of Udolpho Mrs. Radcliffe received
£500, and
for The Italian £800; while for the manuscript of Northanger Abbey,
the bookseller paid Jane Austen the ungenerous sum of £10, selling
it again later to Henry Austen for the same amount.
The contrast in
market value is significant. The publisher, who, it may be added,
was not necessarily a literary critic, probably realised that if the
mock romance were successful, its tendency would be to endanger the
popularity of the prevailing mode in fiction. Hence for many years
it was concealed as effectively as if it had lain in the haunted
apartment of one of Mrs. Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys.
Among Jane
Austen's early unpublished writings were "burlesques ridiculing
the improbable events and exaggerated sentiments which she had met
with in sundry silly romances"; but her spirited defence of
the
novelist's art in Northanger Abbey is clear evidence that her
raillery is directed not against fiction in general, but rather
against such "horrid" stories as those included in the list
supplied to Isabella Thorpe by "a Miss Andrews, one of the
sweetest creatures in the world."
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