A stroll down Jane street: Poonam Saxena on Austen as the ultimate comfort read

The movie retellings are great. Pride and Prejudice is a joy to revisit. But it is a far-less-popular novel that draws me back over and over: Northanger Abbey.

Everyone has a few comfort films or comfort books that bring them special joy.

Frothy, funny and acerbic, Northanger Abbey (1817) is often seen as a satire on the Gothic novel. Above, a still from the 1987 film adaption.

I have a set of comfort books or, perhaps more accurately, a comfort author. She wrote only six major novels in her lifetime but, no matter what I am reading, one of these is almost always open on my Kindle alongside. Since this year marks the 250th birth anniversary of this globally celebrated writer, I’m happy to dedicate this week’s column to the peerless Jane Austen.

Most English-speakers are familiar with Austen, but I suspect many know her more through the countless TV and movie adaptations of her works than through her books themselves. And that is a pity.

The six novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, all published between 1811 and 1817) illuminate a small, cloistered world of village landlords and clergymen, army men and navy officers, matrons, dowagers and spinsters, young girls waiting to make suitable marriages, and a genteel rural life of country dances, card games and tea.

But what makes Austen special is that she populated this frankly-fairly-dull world with the most delightful and diverting characters. There were her heroines and heroes, of course, but also a supporting cast so entertaining, they can eclipse the main actors themselves. Her sharp observations on society, class and the predicaments of women were spot on and strike a chord even today.

The final stroke of genius: her ironic humour, which lands even at the nth reading.

These gifts that she brought to the page are why her stories are still being retold centuries on, as Hindi and Tamil films, as manga works in Japan, even as the Bridget Jones film franchise. (In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see Austen as the original template-creator of the modern romcom.)

Pride and Prejudice is the tale retold most often, and the one that invariably tops the list of Austen’s best-loved work. I yield to none in my love for this wonderful novel. But the book I keep gravitating to is one of her least-popular novels, Northanger Abbey.

Published in 1817, soon after her death, this is the frothiest and funniest of her works. Its heroine is 17-year-old Catherine Morland, daughter of a clergyman, who is invited by her kindly neighbours, Mr and Mrs Allen, to accompany them to Bath.

Catherine is an unexceptional, sweet-natured girl, slightly naïve as a result of her youth and sheltered upbringing. I find her the most appealing of Austen’s heroines (followed by Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice).

While in Bath, Catherine falls in love with the charming, witty clergyman Henry Tilney, and strikes up a close friendship with the effusive Isabella Thorpe (only to discover later that she is a vain and selfish coquette).

The characters are sketched with Austen’s signature drollness. She writes, for instance, that Mrs Allen was “one of that numerous class of females whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any man in the world who could like them well enough to marry them.” Her descriptions of Isabella’s dull brother John and his obsessions with the latest carriages, their new features, how many miles they can cover in an hour etc are hilarious (and remind me of all those boring men one meets who are obsessed with the latest cars).

Catherine is youth itself: light of heart, prone to flights of fancy. She has an all-consuming passion for Gothic romances. So taken up is she with thoughts of sinister castles, ancient housekeepers, gloomy passages and “secret” doors that she becomes convinced at some point that Tilney’s father, a formidable retired general, has either murdered his wife or is keeping her locked in a secret room on the family estate. (Northanger Abbey is often seen as a satire on the Gothic novel.)

But Catherine also has one of the most memorable lines of dialogue in any Austen novel. Asked for her thoughts on the subject of history, she says, “The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all – it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.”

Comfort reads that combine sharp insight, wit and humour with engaging storytelling and happy endings are rare. Rarer still is the ability to do this while creating characters one wants to meet over and over again, as if they were old, beloved friends. Austen delivers on all of the above. Every single time.

(To reach Poonam Saxena with feedback, email poonamsaxena3555@gmail.com)