Archive for the ‘Fiction: Gothic’ Category

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

ISBN: 0393978508
174 pages (and from there, up to page 384 of additional material.)
published in 1817.

This is the first Jane Austen novel I’ve ever read, and I was pleasantly surprised. While Jane Austen had often been passed off to me as “chick lit”, I don’t think it was ever properly explained to me the sort of writing style and subject matter that Austen dealt with, and therefore I don’t really feel like I was ever given the opportunity to give her a chance. However, this was a required text for the Intro to English Studies course I’m taking right now, and I’m really grateful that it was. I’ll be reading Sense And Sensibility very soon and I actually suspect that I’ll enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed this one.

Northanger Abbey concerns itself with the story of a young girl, Catherine, who is whisked away to a visit the city of Bath from her modest home. There, she encounters a variety of people of the likes that she has never dealt with before. Although she is no typical heroine (as the author states in the very beginning of the novel) she is very preoccupied with Gothic novels, and the castles and dark matters that they deal with. Throughout the novel we see her grow in very specific, interesting ways, as she falls in love with a young man named Henry Tilney, deals with an assortment of unfavorable characters and learning how to interact in a world that she had never been in before. This is a satirical novel in many ways, and Austen’s biting wit is really evident throughout the entire story.

This book has encouraged me to check out some of the old Gothic novels that inspired it, so I’m in the middle of a few good ones right now. I feel like this book opened up so many doors for me in literature. I’m so excited about so many things now and I’m really indebted to my professor for having introduced me to them. Yay!