Book Review: ‘Northanger Abbey’ by Jane Austen
For our Dark Academia Adjacent title of season 11 of The Dark Academicals we picked Jane Austen’s posthumous Gothic parody, ‘Northanger Abbey’. It feels rather strange and disingenuous to try and review an Austen novel because I just don’t think I can be truly objective, but let’s give it a whirl.
I last read ‘Northanger Abbey’ back in 2014 and I’d read it once or twice prior to that, but it’s been long enough that my memory was spotty on Austen’s most unusual novel.
With its irrepressible heroine and playful literary games, Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen's novels. It tells the story of young, impressionable Catherine Morland, whose first experience of fashionable society introduces her to the thrills of Gothic romances, and to the sophisticated Tilneys, who invite her to their family home, Northanger Abbey. But there, influenced by novels of horror and intrigue, Catherine begins to think that terrible crimes are being committed, and her imagination threatens to run away with her.
‘Northanger Abbey’ is accepted to be the first novel that Austen wrote in full and intended to publish, written when she was in her early 20s, even though it was published until after her death. The youth of the writing is evident from the first page, and I don’t mean that negatively, it just doesn’t have the maturity and more serious events that her later novels. Our heroine, Catherine, also reads as very, very young and even though she is just 17, she reads a lot younger and I’d forgotten how jarring that is. There were moments where I cringed at Catherine’s choices and wanted to tell her off a little bit.
I ended up not enjoying ‘Northanger Abbey’ as much as I previously had because I didn’t gel with Catherine on this re-read, but the Gothic parody absolutely delivered, possibly even more so than before. Austen gently mocks a genre that she clearly loved, while also joining in on the fun of it with Catherine’s spiralling imagination and seeing nefarious acts behind every door. It’s very tongue in cheek, but affectionately so. The gloom and loom of Northanger Abbey, murder mystery suspicions, high stakes romance and dramatic, Gothic rooms all create exactly the right Gothic atmosphere and it evokes the setting perfectly.
Henry and Catherine aren’t my favourite Austen romance (hello Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth) but it’s a really cool way to see how Austen grew into her writing and her characters throughout her novels; it would be very interesting to read them chronologically as that doesn’t line up with publication order…
It’s always a treat to revisit Austen and I would really like to read ‘Emma’ ‘Mansfield Park’ as I’ve only read each of those once!
What’s your favourite Austen novel?
Written by Sophie
