Abstract

This article makes a case for the unusual nature of Northanger Abbey’s reception in Maoist China and analyzes the socio-political factors that may have contributed to this case. Northanger Abbey (1817) was one of the few British novels that, despite being considered conservative and bourgeois by its Chinese translator, was nevertheless published in China in 1958. Why would the publisher want such a work to be translated, given that it seemed to contradict Maoist orthodoxy? I argue that this unusual case was shaped by the shifting political dynamics of that period. Northanger Abbey may well have been selected for its realist streak and its relevance to the marriage reforms of socialist China. By not being sanctioned by Soviet critics, Northanger Abbey’s Maoist reception was particularly subject to the cultural politics of the moment. The translator’s presentation of it as bourgeois was most likely shaped by the increasingly leftist political climate following the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957–1958) when it would have been politically risky to defend a novel centered on romantic love. The act of publishing Northanger Abbey cannot be explained in simple terms of compliance or resistance but rather suggests a complex negotiation between cultural workers and the uncertain political circumstances under which they worked.