After reading Robert Merrett’s “Consuming Modes in Northanger Abbey: Jane Austen’s Economic View of Literary Nationalism” and Lauren Miskin’s “‘True Indian Muslin’ and the Politics of Consumption in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, I realize scholars are thinking about the various ways characters in the novel represent and relate to different forms of consumer culture and commodification.

Merrett argues that Catherine’s literary naivety blinds her to economic and social signs, such as fashion and money. At the same time, however, Merrett points out that Catherine is a consumer, even if she “does not always admit so” (228). Merrett also considers other characters’ relation to consumption. IN thinking about the Tilneys, he writes that the “architecture and furniture of Northanger Abbey displace the antiquarianism of the Gothic and sentimental genres. Prudent consumers, the Tilney family obliges Austen to limit her satire on consumerism” (224).

In her essay Lauren Miskin suggests that Henry Tilney represents a style of “imperial connoisseurship” that supports both patriarchal and imperial structures (6).

I am not quite sure what we want to add to this scholarly conversation yet. I need to do a bit more thinking about the novel and the cultural work it is doing.