Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey was written in 1798, although it was not published until after her death when it was compiled with her final novel, Persuasion. It is notable for being a fierce parody of the late 18th century Gothic style's fainting heroines, 'terror' (giving hints of something fantastic but dreadful, only to quash it later with mundane truth) and haunted medieval buildings. Austen targets with particular venom Ann Radcliffe's extremely popular The Mysteries of Udolpho and has her characters reading and mimicking it whilst the author undermines it at every opportunity. Austen's comparatively thin novel as good as destroyed Radcliffe's reputation for almost two centuries and the exciting gothic writ large of Udolpho is only now being reassessed. Northanger Abbey itself concerns a typical Austen heroine, the young Catherine Morland who is taken to the fashionable resort of Bath with the her friends the Allens. From there she travels to the eponymous medieval abbey, the seat of the Tilneys. As an impressionable girl, Catherine becomes obsessed with the possible atrocities going on at Northanger Abbey, inspired by Radcliffe's novel. As ever, Austen cannot resist injecting a little romance into proceedings and she puts Captain Tilney under the spell of the unpleasant, scheming Isabella Thorpe. The novel's central theme, common to Emma and Sense and Sensibility is the peril of confusing life and art: in this instance literature.