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Welcome Jane Austen Society of North America! This year, Portland, will be the host city for JASNA's annual conference, from October 28 through October 31. The theme is "Jane Austen and the Abbey: Mystery, Mayhem and Muslin in Portland," which centers on aspects of mystery in Northanger Abbey, and its parody of the Gothic novel. Visit JASNA's website for more information.

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In Praise of Catherine Morland

In 1803, Jane Austen completed her first novel, Northanger Abbey, and sold it for publication. For reasons never made clear, the London publisher Crosby & Co., who bought the rights, chose not to publish it. While this must have been frustrating for its author, Austen persevered with her literary efforts and found a more sympathetic publisher in Thomas Egerton, who agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park. After further success with Emma, published by John Murray, Austen began work on Persuasion. Her brother Henry Austen bought back the rights to Northanger Abbey, which was then published posthumously.

Northanger Abbey follows 17-year-old Catherine Morland, an innocent country lass and Gothic-novel enthusiast. (Young girls who love the Twilight series: look no further then Catherine Morland; she is your predecessor when it comes to obsessing over brooding men and plights of peril.) The premise of Northanger is an old one: Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Boy comes to seek girl's hand in marriage.

Though a romantic comedy, Northanger Abbey is also a send-up of the Gothic novel. Austen plundered the stereotypical elements of Gothic literature and used them realistically. Though never in mortal danger, our heroine has to learn how to interpret the double meanings of those around her, detect true friends from false, suffer physical and mental anguish at the hands of tyrants and villains, and sleep in an ancient medieval structure — all the while supremely unaware of her own comic misinterpretations of nearly everything around her.

As Austen writes, "No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her to have been born an heroine." Catherine is not the intelligent Elizabeth Bennet, the busybody Emma, or the sensible Elinor Dashwood. In fact, Catherine is naïve almost to the extreme. She takes everyone at his or her word, sees no hidden motives, and has a moral compass generally tuned to the superficial. But Catherine is a constant surprise, for just as you begin to doubt her, you realize she is, in fact, not as simple as you were first led to suppose. Catherine has a highly developed sense of right and wrong, honor and deceit. She is free from falsehood and has the strength (a requirement in all heroines, not just Gothic inspired) to stand her ground and work her will. All she needs is the life experience to grant her the confidence to know that she can depend on her own judgment.

Another striking characteristic that Catherine possesses is a thoroughly refreshing candor. Few women in Austen novels love their man as obviously as Catherine loves Henry Tilney. As she begins to fall in love with him, her delight in his company is always sincere, never coy, never veiled. Once when kidnapped by a villain and prevented from meeting her man, Catherine later apologizes to Henry, explaining, "...but I begged Mr. Thorpe so earnestly to stop...and if Mr. Thorpe would only have stopped I would have jumped out and run after you."

In Northanger Abbey, Austen creates her most comical, laugh-out-loud dialogue and situations that recall Shakespearian comedies and Monty Python sketches. Her famed use of irony is on full display. The narrator (Austen herself), while never scornful, dryly observes the goings on, sometimes with barely suppressed amusement at her own cleverness. But since she is having such fun and has delighted us so much, we easily forgive her. While it hasn't the complicated layering of Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey is more than a delightful romp, easily taking first prize for comedy, satire, coming-of-age awakening, uncomplicated love, and the sheer pleasure it provides in its approval of feeding the imagination through the reading of fiction.

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Northanger Abbey and Gothic Fiction

In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland is deeply influenced by Gothic fiction, and her flights of fancy take inspiration from Ann Radcliffe's popular novel The Mysteries of Udolpho. Udolpho follows the fortunes of Emily St. Aubert, who suffers, among other misadventures, the death of her father, supernatural terrors in a gloomy castle, and the machinations of an Italian brigand.

Other Gothic novels mentioned in Northanger Abbey:

The Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons

Clermont by Regina Maria Roche

The Mysterious Warning: A German Tale by Eliza Parsons

The Necromancer: or, The Tale of the Black Forest by Lawrence Flammenberg (pseudonym for Karl Friedrich Kahlert)

The Midnight Bell by Francis Lathom

The Orphan of the Rhine by Eleanor Sleath

Horrid Mysteries by the Marquis de Grosse

The Italian by Ann

Carson McCullers's 1940 debut, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, was a literary sensation. Topping bestseller lists it was lauded by critics and the public alike. Today it is a genuine classic, regularly appearing on literary lists. McCullers went on to write three more novels, a short story collection, plays, poems, and an unfinished autobiography, before her early death in 1967.

I was a late comer to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. For years it was on my mental list of recognized classics I hadn't read and would one day get to. The title had always captivated me, sounding like a line confiscated from a W. H. Auden poem (it was in fact taken from Fiona MacLeod poem "The Lonely Hunter"). Then there was her face, Carson's face, so intriguing, not beautiful but with an elfin prettiness that could look surprisingly seductive. Carson had a movie star's ability to reveal her inner emotional life for the camera. So it was with great anticipation that I finally opened Hunter and when finished I was, well, not so much unimpressed as I was perhaps let down. Had I expected too much? The writing was beautiful, the characterizations strong, but somehow I felt it needed trimming and would have made a better novella than it did a full-length novel. But I have no intention of disparaging a universally beloved classic that I enjoyed but was not enamored of. As time went by I couldn't help but wonder more about McCullers. I often found myself looking at her haunting face, feeling slightly puzzled at its elusive quality.

Then February House by Sherill Tippins was recommended by a friend who knew how much I enjoy literary history (especially scandals and gossip!). The history of this brief artistic utopia was one I'd read about only in footnotes. February House was the Brooklyn brownstone that became a literary commune, housing McCullers, W. H. Auden, Paul Bowles, and the burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee (who during her stay began writing The G-String Murders). From that and further reading I discovered Carson's earlier marriage to Reeves McCullers, an aspiring writer. Extreme dependency, sexual confusion and experimentation on both sides, separation, divorce, remarriage, suicide attempts, all of this Carson tried to make sense of, after Reeves's death, in her second play, The Square Root of Wonderful. Throughout much of her life McCullers suffered from illnesses: rheumatic fever, strokes that left her partially paralyzed by age 31, and alcoholism. No wonder shadows haunted her face.

About a year ago I decided to attempt McCullers again, this time choosing Reflections in a Golden Eye. What a surprise! How could this book have come from the same author as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter? Nothing remotely sentimental graced its pages and for that I was grateful. Reflections in a Golden Eye has a twisted cast of characters and McCullers hides nothing. Like an efficient archivist, McCullers catalogs the unintentional webs her characters weave. Repressed homosexual Captain Penderton stalks the solitary Private Williams who stalks the delicious adulteress Lenora who sexes the depressed Major Langdon while the fragile Allison retreats further into fantasy. Oddly, I found myself happy to have read Hunter before Golden Eye, as I was able to appreciate McCullers's ability to detach so completely and record the frailty of the human experience. When it was first published, readers were gob-smacked. Even today those who know McCullers only by The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter are astonished when they read Reflections in a Golden Eye. But when they do, I think they know her better.

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See also the faithful 1967 screen adaptation of Reflections directed by John Huston and starring Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Brian Keith, and Julie Harris, who also starred in McCullers's play The Member of the

Charlotte Brontë is justly famed for her "poor, plain, obscure, and little heroine" whom she blessed with an independent spirit and deep seated self-reliance. But Brontë wrote two additional novels before she died. Her second work, Shirley, set against the Luddite uprisings in Yorkshire, has two sets of love interests. Though popular when published, Shirley is considered by some to be a misfire. Social novel or love story? Either way, it indicates that Brontë was willing and able to write from a larger perspective and to create multiple unique characters.

Villette, on the other hand, has Brontë back on more familiar territory. Even Virginia Woolf considered Villette to be greater than Jane Eyre and it is easy to see why. Brontë composed Jane Eyre at lightning speed while caring for her father as he recovered from eye surgery. With Villette we have an author who is very sure of her abilities and knows she has an audience that appreciates her work. Here Brontë was able to hone and perfect her technique within the framework of an adult fairy tale with a cast of highly complex characters. Villette is Brontë's darkest, most complex novel and its heroine, Lucy Snow, is the anti-Jane. Lucy lacks Jane's inner resources and would gladly fade into the shadows at every opportunity. She is not plucky. She is not spirited. She expects nothing and has only a modicum of desire to survive. She is in love with two men and only one of them has the power to recognize the fire within her, which she continually strives to snuff out. Lucy's feelings constantly overwhelm her and she continually curbs her desires in a world she knows would never accept the passions she feels. She evens goes a little mad. Unlike Jane, Lucy reveals little to us, often glossing over years in her existence she'd rather soon forget. For every step forward, she takes two steps back. Lucy Snow is not an easy heroine to love and it was brave of Charlotte Brontë to create her.

See also: Anne Brontë, the youngest sister. While slightly less talented than Charlotte and Emily, Anne's novels were, in their way, more shocking to a Victorian reader's sensibilities. Agnes Grey is her novel of what it was really like to be a governess, unlike the more romanticized Jane Eyre. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Penguin Classics) has its heroine (at a time when women had no rights, least of all to their own children) kidnap her son rather than have him raised by his abusive, alcoholic father.

And for even further consideration: The Brontës by Juliet Barker. Every literary biography is considered "definitive" but this one really deserves that description; encompassing the entire family, it makes for fascinating reading. Is it just me or are some so-called famous lives really boring and repetitious when you scratch the surface while other more monotonous lives are riveting when you look underneath? And so it was with the apparently drab Brontës. So much was seething behind that parsonage door! Also consider The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller for a detailed history of how every generation reinterprets the