Lauren Miskin, “‘True Indian Muslin’ and the Politics of Consumption in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey”
Lauren Miskin’s essay discusses Henry Tilney’s knowledge and connoisseurship of fashion—specifically of muslin fabric—in Northanger Abbey as an index of larger political and economic concerns in the novel, including the intersecting influences of patriarchy, imperial history, and consumerism. Miskin places Henry’s comments about fabric within a carefully researched history of muslin, arguing that such contexts are crucial for understanding the larger politics in the background of Austen’s fiction, particularly that of patriarchal oppression.