Jane Austen and History

“But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. . . I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all – it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths, their thoughts and designs – the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books.” (Emphasis added)

Throughout Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen uses her heroine Catherine Morland as a mouthpiece for satire, situating her as a girl who becomes a heroine in her own gothic novel through her overactive imagination. Because of this satirical bent, Morland is not as distinct a mouthpiece for Austen’s own views about the world as some of her other heroines. However, in this instance, where Catherine passes judgment on history, I believe Austen is using her heroine to express her own views on this particular genre of writing.

Throughout the novel, we see Austen using her characters and her own voice as narrator to champion novel writing and reading. She responds to criticism of novels as a woman’s genre and urges novelists to stick together in support of their form against critics who dismiss it as insipid. Henry Tilney’s generous embrace of the novel furthers this point.

This passage takes an opposite tact and criticizes the historical writing of Austen’s time for lacking precisely what the novel provides. Novels, particularly the gothic novel and romances like Ann Radcliffe’s, were largely considered the domain of women – silly books with outlandish plots. However, what Austen points to indirectly here is that novels such as Radcliffe’s were probably largely dismissed as women’s novels because they feature female protagonists (just as Austen’s do). For Catherine Morland, this is what drives her love of the genre. Catherine relates to and idolizes the heroines of novels, so much so that she imagines herself in circumstances that would make her one of them.

Catherine’s chief complaint and reason for disliking history is that the books are dominated by male subjects involved in traditionally masculine activities like war and matters of religion. Here, both Austen and Catherine point to a problem that plagued history as a subject for centuries – written by and about men, history focused on those in power --political and religious leaders (by and large men). Recently, history as a field has sought to correct this, exploring subjects on the margins and using fields like material culture to investigate the records of individuals who weren’t kings or popes.

Catherine finds history dull because she cannot find figures or circumstances in the storytelling with which to relate. Austen even wryly points out that much history writing at the time features just as much fiction as novels. It is not the lack of inventiveness in the storytelling that dismays Catherine; it is the lack of female protagonists involved in circumstances that she might find either relatable or tantalizing.

Austen uses her heroine to call attention to the pitfalls of another popular form of writing in her time. She even goes a step further to demonstrate that those pitfalls are the favorable hallmarks of many novels. Indirectly, Austen criticizes another genre for lacking traits that bolster her own.