'It tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. 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.' So runs the bright but ingenuous Catherine Moreland's famous dismissal of the relevance and attractiveness of history. Less well-known, but more revealing, however, is the comment that Jane Austen was careful to insert not just before but after these irreverent lines in Northanger Abbey. 'I am fond of history' is Eleanor Tilney's quiet but repeated rebuke: and since she is older than Catherine as well as wiser, much better-educated and socially far more elevated, a landowner's daughter and the future wife of a viscount, the intelligent reader is clearly intended to identify with and endorse her judgment. Properly viewed, we are meant to conclude, history is herstory too.

LRB 9 July 1992 | PDF Download