Northanger Abbey & the Omniscient Narrator

I consider Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen one of the funniest novels in existence. 

It has its problems, as critics have pointed out, including a tad too much "and then they went there next" plotting. However, the larger problems attend its retellings, specifically movie retellings. Far too often, the writer and director turn Catherine's prosaic life into a drama. 

They miss the joke. 

After my forays into Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion, I settled on Northanger Abbey as an entertaining third tribute-to-Austen project. However, I was stymied because in order to do Northanger Abbey justice, the story cannot be told from either Catherine or Henry's points of views. Not even Isabella's p.o.v.--she is far too shallow and self-regarding to merit a "villain's" justifications. And John Thorpe is barely able to form a consistent thought.  

I realized that the narrator needed to be a kind of Daria--an omniscient, wry outsider--yet a narrator who is invested in the outcome. 

I decided to go literal regarding omniscience: the narrator would be one of my gods from Kouros Underground. Rather than an obsession with "horrid" novels, Catherine would be passionately devoted to the darker Greek myths. 

Initially, the narrator god was going to be Hermes--but my Hermes' backstory is rather troubled and he is far too cynical. Although the narrator of Northanger Abbey mocks Catherine and Henry, the mockery is more gentle and kindly than acerbic, caustic, and self-serving. 

Consequently, my narrating God became Ven or Venus, the male Aphrodite in my Greek world. He is kind, sardonic, and bemused. He looks like a twenty-six-year-old skateboarder, TJ Tyne in a hoodie. He is actually closer to late thirties and a product of 1990s Seattle grunge culture. He can make cultural references to Princess Bride and supermarket romances with the best of them!

I found, rather to my relief and amusement, that nineteenth-century Gothic literature and Greek myths are "birds of a feather." There's a reason the connection thrived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so Dracula and Edgar Allan Poe's stories/poems include direct and indirect references to the classics.  

Catherine Morland & The Matchmaker is now available on Amazon.