Northanger Abbey

288 pages

English language

Published April 27, 2005

ISBN:
978-1-59308-264-2
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3 stars (1 review)

Northanger Abbey is both a perfectly aimed literary parody and a withering satire of the commercial aspects of marriage among the English gentry at the turn of the nineteenth century. But most of all, it is the story of the initiation into life of its naïve but sweetly appealing heroine, Catherine Morland, a willing victim of the contemporary craze for Gothic literature who is determined to see herself as the heroine of a dark and thrilling romance.

When Catherine is invited to Northanger Abbey, the grand though forbidding ancestral seat of her suitor, Henry Tilney, she finds herself embroiled in a real drama of misapprehension, mistreatment, and mortification, until common sense and humor—and a crucial clarification of Catherine’s financial status—puts all to right. Written in 1798 but not published until after Austen’s death in 1817, Northanger Abbey is characteristically clearheaded and strong, and infinitely subtle in its comedy.

11 editions

Pleasant, but not entirely satisfying.

3 stars

Maybe 3.5 stars. While Austen has a facility with the language, and an excellent ability to convey a convincing character, there are too many authorial issues which intrude for my tastes. I am not a fan of the author's frequent breaches of the fourth wall, though I recognize that authorial interjection was much more prevalent in previous times. I also feel that the overall novel is a bit of a mash-up, combining merely another of Austen's tales of romance and socio-economic standing with her supposed satirical take on the atmosphere-heavy Gothic novels of the period. The latter seems a bit too wedged into the former, with the titular Abbey itself not even appearing until two-thirds into the novel. Catherine's melodramatic predictions and fears may be overturned one by one by the banalities of reality in a fairly amusing manner, but it has little to do with the rest of the …