Reading: Catherine Morland and Us

“But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.”

-Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

            Reading is often regarded as a form of escapism -“to get lost in a good book,” as the expression goes; it is often viewed as a diversion from our lives, as if our lives are put on hold while we are engaged by literature. A similar view is often held regarding education –quite often students are told that after school, they will be out in the real world. But education is a part of the real world; professors and students are not temporarily existing in some kind of alternate, suspended reality. Likewise, life does not stop when we read. The time we spend engaged in reading any kind of written work is as valuable an experience as any other. We can even argue that it is among the most important experiences we can have. The same can be said for our schooling.

            Literary critic, Gerald Graff, had remarked on negative views that many hold toward literary criticism; he expressed that these views are tied to a sense that we spend more time talking about life than living it. This is at the heart of the view that education –specifically reading, analyzing literature and discussing it- is somehow excluded from what we would consider life. Whether we read a book of our own choosing for enjoyment on a Sunday evening, or we analyze the character development in a novel prescribed by a comparative literature professor, the effects of the information we take in can range from subtly flavoring our lives during the period that we are reading that work to dramatically influencing who we are.

            The above quote from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey describes the changes in our central character, Catherine Morland, as her interests shift from playing outside as a child to shaping her mind with books; shaping her mind into that of a heroine as a young lady. Northanger Abbey is a novel about novels; through out the work there is commentary about reading and its influence. This particular passage is provided by our narrator and as one of the first references to reading, novels and the act of reading them are held in a positive light. This is a key moment in Catherine’s character development and in addition, at this early stage in the novel, our narrator establishes a unique relationship with us as readers.

Northanger Abbey is metafiction; as Catherine reads novels within the novel, the narrator stops to address us as readers and invites us to participate in this multilayered text. This is when that real life experience of reading brings us as close as possible to fiction. As a character’s life is flavored by her books, we seem to become active participants and our lives are flavored in turn.