Northanger Abbey. Jane Austen.

Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1818.

Why read it? Novel. Satirizes the genre of Gothic mansions with mysterious goings on and horror. I think this novel illustrates Austen's versatility within the limited experiences she was able to describe. Of course, for another point of view on the Gothic, read Edgar Allen Poe.

Catherine Morland falls in love with Henry Tilney, a young clergyman. Believing her to be wealthy, Henry's father invites Catherine to Northanger Abbey, the Tilney home. Greatly influenced by her reading of Ann Radcliffe's novel Mysteries of Udolpho, Catherine sees Northanger Abbey as a house of nightmarish mysteries and is terrified by her own imagination. Her visions of medieval horror prove groundless, of course. However, she is soon ordered out of the house by Henry's dictatorial father when he discovers that she is not wealthy. Henry follows her and persuades her to marry him. The novel gives Austen an opportunity to satirize the Radcliffe school of romantic mystery and to treat a favorite theme of feminine self-delusion. Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. Fourth Edition. Ed. Bruce Murphy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.

From Encarta98 Desk Encyclopedia, 1996/97. Microsoft Corporation: The works of Jane Austen are very different in style from the romanticism favored by her contemporaries. With trenchant observation and in meticulous detail, she presented the quiet, day-to-day country life of the upper-middle-class English. Even the most minor characters are vividly portrayed in Austen's lucid style. Her characteristic theme was that maturity is achieved through the loss of illusions.