Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen

Having reached the end of the Austen marathon, unless some midlife crisis should one day lure me back, I can close the annals of Regency romance now and forever. One of the last to be published, despite being the first written, Northanger Abbey is a gothic parody weaved in with the usual satire of social convention. The first half of the book is set in the leisure district of Bath, whilst the second takes place at the titular abbey in Gloucestershire. The protagonist, Catherine Morland, is unconventional as the giddy, impressionable tomboy, lacking much of the good looks and common sense of Austen's later heroines. Hailing from a humble parsonage in Fullerton, she is invited on holiday to Bath with her wealthy but silly neighbours, the Allens. Once there she falls in with the Thorpes, a set of unsavoury characters who exhibit all the reckless novelty seeking of the idle classes. Henry Tilney, a young man of superior values, fills the role of obligatory love interest.

Due to being written during Austen's precocious early twenties, Northanger Abbey is perhaps less sophisticated a story as a whole. Rather than basing itself on any one narrative model, it has been criticised for playing with, and flitting between, different genres too readily. The text is saturated with references to gothic novels, most notably those by Anne Radcliffe, such as the much alluded to The Mysteries of Udolpho. The reader is invited to consider Catherine as the romantic heroine, whilst simultaneously witnessing her as completely unqualified for the role. Her sensationalist and naive expectations are continually foiled, subverted, and eventually annihilated by humdrum reality; an old, enticing chest at Northanger Abbey turns out to reveal nothing more than folded linen. The dangers of an overactive imagination are gently propounded by the arch narrator, and Catherine's follies gradually give way to amateur wisdom. In this sense, the novel can be read as a bildungsroman.

Northanger Abbey is generally thought of as Austen's most unpopular novel; it is certainly the most singular in its jarring transition from a comedy of manners to gothic intrigue in the latter half. An examination of genre and the novel's form, Austen is frequently colloquial with the reader, self reflective, and surprisingly modern in her address. Towards the end of the novel, she playfully suggests that due to the dwindling amount of pages, the reader must be expecting the inevitable happy union between Catherine and Henry. By no means a terrible read, I was pleasantly struck with the engaging tone of Northanger, but the payoff fell sadly short of exciting. The climax involved Catherine being sent home from the abbey at short notice, without a servant to attend her, on a Sunday! Recommended to those who wouldn't normally try Austen.

Rating: 2/5