The “Perfect Happiness”: A Joke To Be Taken Seriously in Northanger Abbey?

     The last few pages of Northanger Abbey left me particularly puzzled. Was I supposed to laugh sarcastically or to sit there in a state of humbled acceptance? Probably both. Austen strays out of her characteristic, detailed style and speeds the plot up, almost as if she is slightly “over” her story right at its supposed climax point. In these final moments, she delivers a rushed vagueness that almost appears as blasé. Austen avoids “unnecessary” (p.234) descriptions to messily tie the knot on the “perfect happiness” (p. 235) of two marriages. She lets us readers imagine the new Mr. Eleanor Tilney for ourselves, since we can all “instantly” (p.234) envision manly perfection. As usual, she is pulling the rug from under us since we would all have very different readings of this perfection. She mocks us until the end then, just as she invites us to project our own fancies  into truths (in the trails of Catherine). In a way, there is a sense of handing the “authorship relay” to us buffoons. The first person narrator intimately asks us to become the readers-writers of the ending (or the new Tilney beginnings) since this is no longer the story she is interested in, but rather the cliché we require as a consumer audience. We are just like Catherine, elaborating on our hopes and fears when our author does not give us enough of our addiction fix. Have we not learned our lesson?

    Austen has just divulged to us that Henry Tilney grew into affection for Catherine based on a flattered ego, and then stood up to his father, defending his “code of honor”. Like Catherine, who envisions herself as a heroine, so Henry proudly (and somewhat vainly) tries to define himself based on the chivalric or gothic models he has read about. Meanwhile, Eleanor puts up with any type of nasty masculine behavior, whether her brother’s insults or her father’s reprimands, so how would she know to pick the right person? Maybe she would. Maybe she wouldn’t. And maybe, either outcome is ok. To each his own.

    Just as Austen gives us the grand brushstrokes of the recipe marriage ending, so she leaves us with ellipses, or gaping holes. But maybe these cracks in the ice, these flaws in the relationships of the characters are precisely what make them “perfectly happy”, or perfectly human. Maybe these marriages won’t be climactic, but they will be fraught with incoherence and subtleties, like the novel we just read and enjoyed. The acceptance of imperfections makes things work in the real world. Long term at least. These marriages will “do”.  Austen humorously apologizes for the unions not to have taken place sooner even though if they had, there would have been no novel. In this vein, the “unjust” interventions of the General were actually “conducive” to the couple’s happiness, “improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment” (p.235). If there were no hurdles, there would be no novel. If there were no problems, the relationships would not exist; they just wouldn't be human. As false-flowery as she gets in her happy ending, Austen once again brings common sense to table, acknowledging that the impediments and compromises are a very real part of relationships, and therefore, of the “perfect” human happiness. Yes, she sublimates with generic clichés, but as an audience we have required that out of her; we want that aesthetic “poor taste”. 

    Yet,  maybe she actually is sublimating the imperfection of these unions? Maybe she is precisely praising their simple and settling realness?  Beneath the happy recipe surface, there is irony. But beneath the laughter, there is still a deeper, less detached consideration of our societal values and partnerships: our need for them perhaps, even though they bring us no absolutes, no complete solace? I don’t know… I have to look into this throughout our readings…