Review: Jane Austen’s ‘Northanger Abbey’ (2023)

FAQs

What is the message of Northanger Abbey? ›

Loyalty and Love. Northanger Abbey is a courtship novel that goes against certain important conventions of “courtship novels,” especially to make the point that loyalty is the surest sign of true love.

Northanger Abbey follows the life and loves of its unlikely heroine, seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland, a naïve young woman away from her family for the first time and trying to navigate the world and the heart—with all their innate complexities.

Catherine also learns that General Tilney only kicked her out of the house because he found out she wasn't as rich as he'd supposed.

Northanger Abbey refers to the castle-like building that one of the book's main families, the Tilneys, call home. With a title like this, it seems like the whole book would be taking place at, well, the Abbey.

Within a few months, Eleanor marries a very wealthy and important man, which puts the General in a good mood. Once he is told of the true nature of the Morland's financial situation, which is moderate, he gives his consent, and the novel ends with the marriage of Henry and Catherine.

The narrative has two sources of conflict: internal and external. The internal conflict arises due to Catherine's own inability to distinguish fiction from reality. The external conflict arises from Catherine being pursued and manipulated by the Thorpes for their own ends.

The climax is a bit of a moral one – that doesn't mean it's not exciting. Catherine accuses General Tilney of being a murderer to Henry, albeit in a round about way. Probably not the best thing to tell your crush, but there you go. Henry calls her on her behavior and Catherine realizes the error of her ways.

John Thorpe is the true villain of Northanger Abbey—as Austen suggests through her parody of Ann Radcliffe's gothic novels.

Henry Tilney: A quirky 26-year-old well-read clergyman, brother of Eleanor and Frederick Tilney, and a member of the wealthy Tilney family. He is Catherine's love interest and comes to return her feelings in the course of the novel and marries her in the end.

So in the end, their romance is not earth-shattering, it is simple and uncomplicated. Henry Tilney loves Catherine because she loves him and she is smitten with him because he was basically the first man to pay her any attention.

Does Northanger Abbey have a happy ending? ›

Which book genresuits you the most? Northanger Abbey has a very neat and tidy and rather clichéd ending: all the nice main characters get married to other nice characters and live happily ever after.

Eleanor Tilney is the only daughter of General Tilney, an ambitious man who wants his children to marry for wealth and status; however, Eleanor has fallen in love with her brother Henry's penniless friend who visited Northanger Abbey. By chance, her lover inherits a viscountcy, and she is able to marry him.

In Jane Austen's words, Henry Tilney, the hero of Northanger Abbey, seemed to be about “four or five and twenty, was rather tall, had a pleasing countenance, a very intelligent and lively eye, and, if not quite handsome, was very near it.”

Austen was 23-24 years old, and it seems likely that her first visit to Bath in 1797 inspired her to set part of the novel in that city. The manuscript was originally titled Susan but was renamed Northanger Abbey when it was published posthumously.

Catherine Morland

The protagonist of Northanger Abbey. Catherine is seventeen years old, and has spent all her life in her family's modest home in the rural area of Fullerton. While Catherine has read many novels (particularly Gothic novels), she is very inexperienced at reading people.

It turns out Isabella is in love with James Morland. She's thrilled when he arrives in Bath with her older brother John. Isabella goes out riding with James while Catherine rides with John. She tries to pressure Catherine into ditching the Tilneys to come on an excursion with her, John, and James.

Henry Tilney is a main character in Northanger Abbey. He is married to Catherine Morland Tilney.

In "NORTHANGER ABBEY", he allowed the engaged Isabella Thorpe to have sex with the lecherous Captain Frederick Tilney, instead of simply flirting with him.

Catherine is an unlikely heroine, too, because her person, meaning, her looks, go against the fictional norm. Most heroines in Gothic novels were stunningly beautiful, virtuous, dutiful, accomplished, and modest. They were perfect women stuck in perilous circumstances.

foreshadowingForeshadowing often exists in the novel as a parody of Gothic conventions. On the ride to the Abbey, Henry tells Catherine a hypothetical story about her upcoming first night in Bath, complete with mysterious chests, hidden passages, and villainous doings.

How does Catherine change in Northanger Abbey? ›

By the end of the novel, she has become a much better judge of character, having learned from her mistakes with Isabella and General Tilney. She is also, perhaps, a bit more cynical about people, as Henry is. Ultimately, it is her integrity and caring nature that win Henry's heart and bring her happiness.

The third-person narrative in Northanger Abbey is filtered primarily through Catherine. We see people and events through her eyes, and are given access to her thoughts and feelings in a way we are not with any other character.

In our case, Northanger Abbey is a satire in which Jane Austen portrays her society and questions its conventions and values. She mocks eighteenth century literature and more specifically Radcliffean Gothic literature.

By portraying Catherine as a non-conventional female character, Austen rejects the normal social customs for women and attempts to change them with her writing. The extremely important message of asserting women's rationality is apparent in Northanger Abbey through Austen's mockery of the praise for stupidity in women.

The Un-Heroic Heroine

Catherine is many things, but heroic isn't one of them. She is hapless, at times a bit ridiculous, but always very kind and sweet. She is also inexperienced and naive, and young.

Catherine Morland is the heroine of Jane Austen's 1817 novel Northanger Abbey. A modest, kind-hearted ingénue, she is led by her reading of Gothic literature to misinterpret much of the social world she encounters.

When she goes to stay in Bath, she meets the Tilney and Thorpe siblings, hijinks ensue, and she ends up falling in love with the dashing Henry Tilney, and goes to stay with him and his sister in their family's austere manor.

Ultimately, across The Great season 2, Catherine has fallen in love with Peter. When she attacks Pugachev, she does so with his back turned to ensure that she doesn't have to see the face of the man that she loves as she kills him.

Lady Catherine is the widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh. If she were not noble, she would be styled as Lady de Bourgh, since her husband was a knight. The couple had a single daughter, Anne de Bourgh.

Mr.

Darcy has endured as Austen's most popular hero — and one of the most popular romantic heroes of all time.

Who tells Catherine she must leave Northanger Abbey? ›

Eleanor shows Catherine around the house and tells her about her mother, who died nine years earlier. At the General's behest, Eleanor tells Catherine she must leave Northanger Abbey.

Collins's proposal. In Northanger Abbey, Mr. and Mrs. Morland at first withhold their consent, not because they dislike Henry, not because they are angry at the general, but because the general has a right to forbid his son to marry the lady he has chosen, the lady who has accepted his proposal.

In terms of plot and style, Northanger Abbey isn't that hard to follow. Sure, the language is a bit old fashioned and some of the speech patterns do take a little getting used to, but the book is pretty straightforward overall. It's also relatively short too, and makes for a fun, and funny, read.

A wonderfully entertaining coming-of-age story, Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austen's "Gothic parody." Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a decidedly satirical twist.

Here is an example of how the narrator describes Catherine at the very beginning of the novel: “Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her.” Catherine falls in love with Henry Tilney, whose father is the villain of the novel.

The novel thus concludes with three marriages: Jane and Frank, Harriet and Robert, and Emma and Mr. Knightley.

By the end of the show, Eleanor shows the most improvement out the main characters, being a selfless and caring person. She spends her time in the actual Good Place after fixing how humans are judged in the afterlife spending time with her now-fiancé Chidi.

Suspense, anxiety, looming disaster, and all that stuff are at the core of the Gothic genre, from Dracula to The Turn of the Screw. Northanger Abbey lacks supernatural and horror elements that generally make up the Gothic, but it does have lots of suspense and anxiety.

Often, the narrator directly addresses the reader Ferris Bueller-style and uses the first person "I." So Northanger Abbey is mainly an example of third person limited omniscient narration, in that we primarily stick with Catherine and get the story from her perspective.

Most literary critics refer to Northanger Abbey as Jane Austen's "Gothic parody" because it satirizes the form and conventions of the Gothic novels that were popular during the time when Austen wrote Northanger Abbey.

What is the main purpose of Lady Catherine's visit? ›

The ironic result of Lady Catherine's visit is to insure the marriage between Darcy and Elizabeth. Lady Catherine came in order to prevent it, but when Darcy hears the manner in which Elizabeth answered her, he realizes that Elizabeth's feelings must have changed in some degree.

At the same time, Northanger Abbey could also be considered Jane Austen's proto-feminist critique of the gender relations and social structures of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century.

Darcy's change in personality, and accentuates the caring nature of Mrs. Gardiner. In a more global sense, Jane Austen uses Lady Catherine as a means of criticizing the social status of young women during early 19th century England, but more importantly, as a way of debunking rank as an indicator of character.

Austen's Northanger Abbey is not outrightly depicted as a feminist novel, but by portraying Catherine in the way she does, Austen questions the literary ideal female type.

Lady Catherine says that her daughter must marry Mr. Darcy since it was planned upon her daughter's birth. Lady Catherine is powerful and tries to forbid Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy's marriage, but Elizabeth undoes her power.

One of Lady Catherine's main arguments against Elizabeth's marrying Darcy is her concern for Darcy's reputation in high society; if Darcy were to marry Miss de Bourgh, he would be better off. Here Elizabeth again catches her out of order.

Like Mr Collins, his patroness Lady Catherine is a fixed character of exaggerated propensities, a caricature, in her case representing the extremes of snobbish pride and prejudice, which he is only too happy to absorb and reflect.

In our case, Northanger Abbey is a satire in which Jane Austen portrays her society and questions its conventions and values. She mocks eighteenth century literature and more specifically Radcliffean Gothic literature.

Morality, characterized by manners, duty to society and religious seriousness, is a central theme of Austen's works. Drawing on the Johnsonian tradition, Austen uses words such as "duty" and "manners" consistently throughout her fiction as signifiers of her ethical system.

Mrs. Bennet wants her daughters to marry soon, because otherwise, the Bennets are in danger of losing their home. In late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England, women were not allowed to own property. In the case of the Bennets, there is no male heir to keep the property.

Why did Mrs Bennet marry Mr Bennet? ›

Bennet perhaps sought to marry in order to break the entail with the birth of an heir. The narrator reveals this to the reader directly by stating that, when the couple first married “economy was held to be perfectly useless; for, of course, they were to have a son… to join in cutting off the entail” (Austen, 470).

Henry Tilney: A quirky 26-year-old well-read clergyman, brother of Eleanor and Frederick Tilney, and a member of the wealthy Tilney family. He is Catherine's love interest and comes to return her feelings in the course of the novel and marries her in the end.

Most literary critics refer to Northanger Abbey as Jane Austen's "Gothic parody" because it satirizes the form and conventions of the Gothic novels that were popular during the time when Austen wrote Northanger Abbey.