On Jane Austen's View Of Marriage In Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey, the most special novel by Jane Austen, is the first of her six major novels and is the last to come out after her death. A publisher bought the script for 10 pounds, but kept it unpublished until later Henry, Jane's brother purchased it back; Austen revised it greatly according to her ideological transformation for about thirteen years. Northanger Abbey describes Catherine, a naive heroine, who once has a chance to go visiting prosperous Bath and falls in love with Henry Tilney, a rich clergyman. However, misled by the vain words from John Thorpe who is courting Catherine, the General Tilney, Henry's snobbish father who mistakenly believes Catherine to be a rich girl, immediately urges his son to take Catherine in marriage; so all of sudden, Catherine turns a welcome guest to his home, Northanger Abbey of the title; but soon the General drives Catherine out of Northanger Abbey without mercy due to the vengeful words of John Thorpe whose courtship turns out to be a failure. At last, the General permits Henry's happy marriage with Catherine owing to his daughter's fortunate marriage to a viscount and a good sum of Catherine's dowry. At the same time, Catherine is in the process of acquiring the crucial knowledge she needs from Henry Tilney in order to be a successful heroine and achieve what every successful heroine does-a happy marriage to the suitor of her choice. This dissertation is an attempt to appraise the realistic significance of Austen's view of marriage presented in Northanger Abbey and to conclude as follows:Firstly, Austen starts to evaluate heroine's cultivated personality through learning serious lessons and acquiring good education more than the natural qualifications in creating models of happy marriage. Secondly, money determination replaces money consideration in the success or failure of marriage in Northanger Abbey due to Austen's devotion to money and low spirits at later age. Finally, Austen, in the light of Christian morality, punishes severely those who betray the morality of marriage. Accordingly the selfish, dishonest and disloyal persons in Northanger Abbey are destined to fail in both love and marriage.The article is mainly divided into five parts:The first part of the thesis introduces Jane Austen's life and literary achievements, especially the historical background of Northanger Abbey and the making of Jane' view of marriage. In the late eighteenth-century patriarchal England, marriage mainly determinedwomen's social status and economic safety. The "marriage issue" is the most important thing of all to women and naturally it is a weighty theme that draws Jane Austen's attention.The second part 'mainly talks about Jane Austen's own conceptions of values and pursuit into the ideal personality of the heroine. Catherine, to some degree, becomes the mouthpiece of Jane Austen. The theme of Cinderella's happy marriage to the handsome prince can prove Austen's saturation with the Platonic idea that the most passive growth under another's guidance is the truest and strongest foundation of Love.The third part analyzes the reasons why the fate of Catherine's marriage and the others are all determined by money. In fact, Jane Austen stops her literary creation temporarily at the age of 25, mainly due to the great influence of Austen's rich cousin Eliza de Feuillide who enjoys a life of luxury and dissipation in Georgian Age. Jane Austen begins to make the pursuit of money and material incentives, regarding the publication of new books as the way of making money. Since then, Jane's view of marriage has changed a great deal.Part Four looks into Jane Austen's serious moral view of marriage. As a faithful Christian deeply influenced by the New Testament in Northanger Abbey, Jane took for granted that a person should be sincere, unselfish and loyal to love and marriage, and thevirtue should be judged by good sense and taste. So Jane satirizes John's selfishness and dishonesty and Isabella's hypocrisy and disloyalty, and unprecedentedly deprives their right...