We gain many vivid glimpses of Jane Austen's views of life in her novels, and _Northanger Abbey_ holds a place apart from the others, not only for its many pages of burlesque, but as the vehicle by which so many of the author's reflections are conveyed, in a bright wrapping, to her appreciative readers. Let me give one or two examples--
"The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen { 88} of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though, to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable, and too well-informed themselves, to desire anything more in woman than ignorance. But Catherine did not know her own advantages--did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward."
The sister author is Fanny Burney. The opinion of men, the "trifling" or the "reasonable," is Jane Austen's. In Henry Tilney's remarks upon Catherine's extraordinary fears concerning his father's conduct to Mrs. Tilney we may discover something of Jane's view of the general condition of society in her time.
"Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English: that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of { 89} what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies; and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?"
Of Jane Austen as humourist there is no need to write specifically at any length. Almost every extract given from her novels, whatever the point to be illustrated, shows her in that capacity. It is impossible for long to separate her humour from the rest of her qualities. Yet there are people who see no humour in her, and actually like her novels in spite of their "seriousness "!