Northanger Abbey

In Jane Austen’s Gothic Novel Northanger Abbey, there are two polarizing characters introduced; John Thorpe and Henry Tilney. In virtually every love story there a choice between lovers to be made by the heroine, both exhuming intriguing qualities, and Northanger Abbey is no exception to this. Henry Tilney and John Thorpe happen to be the two men of interest. Austen fascinatingly presents the two men as contrasting characters, both in their values, morals, and behaviors. Austen uses the two…

Jane Austen and Societal Exposure in Northanger Abbey Biographical Summary Jane Austen, a classic literary author, was born on December 16, 1775 in Hampshire, England. Her parents are Cassandra Leigh Austen and Reverend George Austen, who raised eight children: James, George, Edward, Henry, Jane, Cassandra, Francis, and Charles. Austen was introduced to her love of writing through the plays she and her family wrote and performed for each other. For most of their life Austen and her sister…

accepted their role in a society that “reduces love to a biological impulse and marriage to a profitable alliance” (Giles, 77). We saw how selfish love represented this in Wuthering Heights and now its presence will be investigated in Northanger Abbey. In Northanger Abbey, we are introduced to an interesting protagonist right from the opening line: “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine” (Austen, 5). Catherine Morland, much like…

The seventeenth-century Gothic novel is associated with the combination of the supernatural realm and Romanticism. Jane Austen’s novel, Northanger Abbey, is an attempt to critique the seventeenth-century Gothic novel by identifying Catherine’s sensibility through her over fascination and addiction to reading—such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. Austen utilizes Catherine’s obsession with novels as a means to highlight how such fascination has caused Catherine to become naïve and…

Throughout the novel Austen shows the reader that real life is superior to fantasy. Austen does so by utilizing realism in every essence of the book and parody to get the reader to realize the folly of Gothic novels. “The evident purpose of Northanger Abbey is to burlesque the popular fiction of her day, to carry its convention and assumptions to an absurd extravagance” (Brown 50). Contradictory to Gothic novels, the readers are interested because the book is such an accurate representation of…

In the novel Northanger Abbey, there is an imbalance of power between the men and the women; men have all the power and women have none. Both John Thorpe and General Tilney use this power to their advantage. During the carriage scene, Catherine was pressured into the carriage and upon seeing her friends, couldn’t get off because she had ‘no power of getting away’. (88) This demonstrates Catherine having zero power and John having all of it, which he holds over her head to get what he wants from…

Rather her heroine in both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion know who they are attracted to and who they want to end up with at very early points in the novel. Anne has never wavered from her love of Wentworth and as soon as Catherine meets Henry she knows he is the one for her. The decision…

moment” (Pride and Prejudice). While this quote was used in Pride and Prejudice, it has truth in it for all of Austen’s stories. Two of her books, Emma and Northanger Abbey, demonstrate this in the captivating way of using characterization, setting, theme, conflict, symbol, and syntax. Austen’s two main characters of Emma and Northanger Abbey contrast each other in personalities. Emma Woodhouse is a very self centered girl born into the upper class. She is the youngest daughter and…

The Gothic Life Northanger Abby offers an almost contradictory look at the Gothic style. On the one hand, Austen seems to criticize and parodies the common motifs of the Gothic as she offers a buildup of fictionalized gothic moments of suspense only to clash them against a humorous mundaneness of actuality. This is seen when Catharine arrives at the Abby. Instead of receiving an omen of murder increasing the suspense and danger surrounding a dilapidated castle, “the breeze had not… waft the…

Netflix’s To The Bone is Honest but Sometimes Uninspired To The Bone is a drama written and directed by Marti Nixon and starring Lily Collins that is Netflix’s latest shot at creating real and insightful programing targeting an audience of young adults. Ellen, a twenty-year old artist, struggles with anorexia nervosa. She comes from a dysfunctional family that includes her half-sister (If I Stay’s Liana Liberato), her talkative and often overbearing step-mother (True Blood’s Carrie Preston),…