"'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 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?'
They had reached the end of the gallery; and with tears of shame, she ran off to her own room."
-Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
(epigraph to Atonement)
I can't believe that in all my readings and re-readings of this novel, I have never noticed this introductory quote. This text, without context, seemingly has no real connection to the rest of the novel. I'm reasonably sure that McEwan would not simply tack on an irrelevant quote on to the beginning of his book, so although I adamantly despise Jane Austen's work (excluding the infinitely more exciting zombie versions), I decided to investigate this novel.
After reading several book reviews and plot summaries I found, to my complete surprise, that this novel had very much in common with Atonement. I was even more surprised to find that it actually seemed like a novel that I would possibly, maybe, even enjoy, despite my intense loathing of most Austen novels. The protagonist of Northanger Abbey is intensely interested in Gothic novels and much like Briony, applies these fictitious novels to real life. She is invited to stay at Northanger Abbey by her suitor's family and wrongfully expects the visit to resemble something out of her novels. When she is forbidden from entering a series of rooms belonging to the late madam of the house, she immediately concludes that there is something sinister going on. She decides to inspect the rooms, entertaining the fantastic prospects of murder or imprisonment. Not only does she find her suspicions to be false but she is caught and punished for her inability to distinguish fiction from reality and is sent home in disgrace and heartbreak. The intrigue of the novel erodes, however, as in typical Austen fashion she is forgiven and everyone gets married in the end.
In class we read another novel by Jane Austen, Emma, which also features a protagonist who commits grave errors in judgement because of her narrow-mindedness and seeing only what she wants to. The errors in this novel, like those in Northanger Abbey, are much less serious than the one in Atonement, as the novel ends, once again, in forgiveness and marriage.
Atonement, in my opinion, seems to be a similar, yet more intense (and as a result, more interesting and heartbreaking) version of this story. Briony, much like the protagonist of Northanger Abbey, is unable to distinguish fiction from reality and because of this she commits a terrible and unforgivable crime. In her mind, she puts together the scenes she had witnessed and misunderstood throughout the day and decides that it only makes sense for Robbie to be the rapist. When she is later questioned by the police as to what she saw, Briony continuously flips between "I know it was him" and "I saw him" - statements that she believes to be interchangeable. Unlike in Northanger Abbey, Briony's lie has dire consequences, launching into motion a series of events that prevents the two lovers, Robbie and Cecilia, from ever being able to fulfill their love. Instead of studying to become a doctor, Robbie is sent to prison and then the war, where he eventually perishes. Cecilia, estranged from her family, abandons her studies and becomes a nurse, eventually perishing when that area is bombed. In a way, Northanger Abbey is a foil to Atonement, or more accurately, McEwan's version of the novel. Briony's version disregards the deaths of Robbie and Cecilia, and allows them the "happily ever after" ending they were deprived of in life, not unlike Austen's novel Northanger Abbey. However in McEwan's novel, forgiveness for Briony's inability to distinguish fiction from reality is absolutely impossible.
"epigraph." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2011.Web. 17 November 2011 http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epigraph
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