Broken Promises in Northanger Abbey

10.6153/EXP.202206_(47).0013

Yih-Dau Wu

broken promises ； Northanger Abbey ； Ann Radcliffe ； textual history ； gothic fiction

Ex-position

47期（2022 / 06 / 01）

219 - 237

英文

This essay explores how the textual history of Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey shapes the novel's gothic-inflected scenes of broken promises. Northanger Abbey began its life as ＂Susan＂ around 1798, but was not published until 1817. The failure of a publisher to publish ＂Susan＂ as promised caused this long delay. I argue that this publication history casts new light on the novel's allusions to the novels of Ann Radcliffe. Scholars of gothic fiction agree that these Radcliffean allusions bespeak Austen's general concern for women's education in Georgian England. But traces of Austen's publication experience in her gothic plot more specifically reflect how she envisions an ideal cooperation between the two sexes in the publishing industry and laments its failure. Moreover, the Radcliffean allusions in the novel intersect with a sophisticated treatment of promise-breaking and memory, one that evokes Austen's mature style. The drama of broken promises in Northanger Abbey fuses the novel's late eighteenth-century origin and its long textual life. This fusion shows that the presence of Radcliffe in Northanger Abbey, instead of fixing this novel in the 1790s, testifies to Austen's continuous engagement with this work.

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