the novel of feminine sensibility, and in Northanger Abbey, begun in 1798, the silli-
ness of Gothic.Catherine Morland reflects: ‘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.’ She learned from Fanny Burney, but preferred Cowper, Crabbe and the
moral essays of Johnson to the fiction of wish-fulfilment.
After juvenilia written to entertain her family, she dedicated herself to the novel.
Her novels are cast in the form of the comedy of manners: accuracy of social behav-
iour and dialogue, moral realism, elegance of style, and ingenuity of plot. For all her
penetration and intelligence, Austen is distinctly a moral idealist. The mistress of
irony unfolds a Cinderella tale ending in an engagement. The heroine, typically of
good family but with little money, has no recognized prospect but marriage; no wish
to marry without love; and no suitable man in sight. After trials and moral discov-
eries, virtue wins. Of the few professional novelists before her, none is so consistent.
Formally, Austen’s fiction has the drastic selectivity of drama, and, like Racine, gains
thereby. The moral life of her time is clear in her pages, although the history is social
not national. Two of her brothers, however, became admirals; and in Persuasion,
amid the vanities of Bath, she rejoices in the challenge of naval officers to the old
social hierarchy. Her comedy of manners accepts the presence or absence of rank,
wealth, brains, beauty and masculinity as facts, and as factors in society, while plac-
ing goodness, rationality and love above them. Such comedy is not trivial, unless a
woman’s choice of husband is trivial. For all her fun and sharp-edged wit, Austen’s
ce ntral concern is with the integrity of a woman’s affections. Her novels become
increasingly moving.
The bright Northanger Abbey and the schematic moral satire ofSense and
Sensibility are pre parator y to the well-managed gaiety ofPr ide and Pre judice, which
the author came to find ‘too light, bright and sparkling’. It is certainly simpler than
R OMANTIC PROSE 251‘Tales of Wonder’ (1802), by
James Gillray, a print
caricaturing the Gothic craze.
Tales of Wonderwas the title
of a collection of tales of
horror published by Matthew
Lewis in 1801. The ladies
listen by candle-light to
Lewis’s The Monk, set in
Spain, the protagonist of
which rapes a young novice,
who turns out to be his sister.