About this title: NORTHANGER ABBEY is about a naïve young woman whose head is full of the Gothic novels she consumes, and who begins to imagine that life may well be even stranger than fiction. Catherine Morland makes a touching, if somewhat charmingly brainless, heroine; Henry Tilney is a self-possessed and witty hero; and the plot device in which Catherine sees General Tilney as a black-hearted villain out of a Gothic romance is ingenious and engrossing. In fact, this early work is full of sustained and sparkling inventiveness, and exhibits the sharp and accurate social observations of Austen's more mature ...
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Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. edge wear. 221, [3] p.; 18 cm. Revised and updated bibliography, c1980. "First Signet Classic printing, October 1965. " read more
Description: Good. Spine is well creased. Covers show wear at the edges and corners. Good Grade C average reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 240 p. Audience: General/trade. "The most sprightly and satirical of Austen's novels, NORTHANGER ABBEY is both a comedy of manners and a cautionary tale. Written when the author herself was in her early twenties... read more
Description: Fine. 0451530845 Excellent condition paperback book, clean pages, NO creases to spine, this book is Near NEW! Shop & Save With US. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Signet Classics, E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1983
ISBN-13:9780451523723ISBN:0451523725
Description: Good. 0451523725 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m..._ read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Signet Classics, E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1983
ISBN-13:9780451523723ISBN:0451523725
Description: Good. 0451523725 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m..._ read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Classic, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780553211979ISBN:0553211978
Description: Good. No Jacket as Issued. Some wear to the covers with a diagonal crease to the back cover at the top. Mild page toning. Previous owners bookplate to the inner front cover. Otherwise a clean copy. read more
"I had not thought of Austen as a satirist prior to reading Northanger Abbey. Within the first chapter the author addresses what the book is not – a gothic romance, thought it is fashioned similarly, and named similarly. Austen points out the heroine’s father did not lock up his daughters, there was no lover of unknown origin, (something Emily Bronte uses years later in Wuthering Heights), and the heroine’s mother does not warn her of the seduction of barons. Rather, when the teenage heroine, Catherine Morland, leaves for a resort town to stay with neighbors, everything is done “with a degree of moderation and composure, which seemed rather consistent with the common feelings of common life...” 6. With the contrasts Austen makes to the typical gothic romance she conveys the message that life is not like the popular novel.
Austen makes some straight forward comments in Northanger Abbey, without irony. Throughout the book she comments on novels, a rather new and popular form in the late 18th century. The novel, evidently, was looked down on, but was also a guilty pleasure. A person would suggest reading Milton or Pope or Addison, but would condemn books by Anne Radcliffe. Even novelists would do this. But Austen, as narrator, would not. She does, however, illustrate problems for those who read such novels, as the character Catherine experiences. Catherine is disappointed that Northanger Abbey isn’t ancient nor dark nor in ruins. She is terribly mistaken in her perception of General Tilney, suspecting he has imprisoned his wife in the Abbey, based on what she had read in novels. I’m not sure if all statements of judgment are ironic or not.
The satire is strong only in a few chapters of the book. Otherwise it is something of the standard Austen work, with characters pairing up according to society’s expectations, then finding out they are mismatched. Though no one may expect Catherine to be a heroine, she is a very good character, practical, sociable, yet refraining from coquetry, earnest. The book tells of her maturation through the age of courtship."
"I read all the other Jane Austen books years ago, with absolute pleasure and admiration for her heroines, and I was going for completion. As a young author in this first novel, Austen seemed to be experimenting with characters and styles. The hero and heroine are pale in comparison to those she created later. The book is regarded as a spoof of gothic novels, and I guess I need to know the gothic novel to appreciate a take-off. I was glad when I was done with the unsubtle Catherine Morland."
"I so feel connected with Catherine since people often say I am over-imaginative, like the heroine in Northanger Abbey. I personally think the mystery element makes the novel more interesting. Northanger Abbey as the setting also gives some Gothic element to the novel. Not really into Gothic stuffs, but sometimes it is needed to add the thrill. However, I would say the plot is kinda flat. I could not find the rising action and how the conflict ends. I don't even comprehend what the conflict really is! If anyone knows it please tell me.
Also, Mr. Tilney is not as appealing as I expected before. True, there are some of his lines that gripped me, and he sounds teasingly funny sometimes. But I found his characterization kinda weak and I did not understand how the heroine falls in love with the hero. It's not really convincing. Weirdly, inspite of all the weaknesses, Northanger Abbey is enjoyable to read. I opened the first page and kept reading it again and again until the end. If only Austen gave me a very strong reason why Catherine loves Mr. Tilney, I would give this book four stars. For now, three stars are enough."
"Having read both Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion I was a little surprised by this one. The first thing that surprised me was that the heroine is basically as thick as they come. I would have said that Austen is the sort of writer who creates the sort of main female characters that men are rather likely to fall in love with. I mean, I know women who go all weak at the knees over Mr Darcy, but when compared to Lizzy he is merely a sad shadow.
All the same, Catherine is hardly what I would have thought of as one of the great Austen female characters. The book begins with an extended description of her and although she comes across as a pretty sort of girl - she is hardly the brain of Britain or really accomplished in any way at all.
The other surprise I found in this was how satirical Austen is - satirical to the point of cynicism. I can only assume she never read this book aloud as she was writing it, because, with her tongue placed quite so firmly in her cheek, she would have bitten the tip of it off if she had. By way of example:
"To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive."
Or perhaps a better and my favourite example:
"The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance."
The discussion that follows this quote between the young people about the nature of natural beauty is very amusing and, well, even savage in its sarcasm.
Okay, so the characters are basically thick and young. The heroine also has the advantage of being gormless. She spends much of the book unaware that people could be anything other than what they seem to be or, when they are clearly acting in a way that is directly opposite to what they say of themselves, she almost invariably takes their word over their deeds. An ideal friend, then I guess, and all too easily manipulated by those around her.
The story of this one is slighter than either of the other books of Austen's I've read. But some of the themes are just as interesting. The affect of trashy novels on the character of young and impressionable heroines is played with beautifully in this book. Again, with her tongue firmly placed in her cheek, she says things like:
"Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding--joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?"
That this particular heroine ends up in her most humiliating trouble following her own fantasy creation at least based on a gothic novel, which only makes her look like an idiot in front of the one person she was most wanting to impress, is an interesting twist on the very strongly asserted 'novels are good' theme stated above.
This was the first of Austen's novels to be published and I guess I should say something like, 'she shows promise, I expect much from her in the future' - and, do you know what, I probably do expect quite a future for our Jane Austen.
I can't finish without saying that I particularly like the final line of this book, because if there is one thing that really makes Austen great it is that she can write great first and final lines.
"I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.""
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