Here’s a funny story: Northanger Abbey
started out as Jane Austen’s first novel, a satiric parody of gothic novels, but
ended up being published posthumously and can be mistaken as a sendup of her
own works. Austen opens the book warning the reader to expect something
different, “No one who has ever seen Catherine Moreland in her infancy would
have supposed her born to be a heroine.” Throughout the story, the author
parodies the tropes of Austen’s earlier (later) novels.
The story covers familiar ground where young
Catherine goes to Bath in the company of a family friend and meets by favorable
and unfavorable men. The plot revolves around the financial considerations of
marriage, miscommunications, and the tension between love and fortune. In the
end, a good match is achieved.
The author makes fun of the standard
tropes.
“There she fell miserably short of the
true heroic height. At present, she did not know her own poverty, for she had
no lover to portray. She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen
one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired
one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was
very moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed! But strange things
may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out. There was
not one lord in the neighborhood: no—not even a baronet. There was not one
family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally
found at their door—not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had
no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.”
As Catherine set off the Bath, “It is
remarkable, however, that she neither insisted on Catherine’s writing by every
post, nor exacted her promise of transmitting the character of every new acquaintance,
nor a detail of every interesting conversation that Bath might produce.” Later
a gentleman chides Catherine, “Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins
to understand the tenor of your life in Bath without one?”
The plot pokes fun at Gothic novels when
Catherine gets in trouble when visiting “Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling
words and wound up Catherine’s feelings to the highest point of ecstasy.” Catherine,
an avid reader of Gothic novels, imagines the father has murdered his wife,
and, when that is disproved, goes searching for her to be still alive a locked
away. (foreshadowing Jane Eyre?).
A humorous romp for Jane Austen readers.
Do not start her.
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