Episode 11.2: ‘Northanger Abbey’ by Jane Austen
It’s that time of the season - dark academia adjacent time!
Our adjacent title for this season is a book from one of my literary heroes and one of my most beloved writers, Jane Austen. It’s the first time we’re tackling Austen on the podcast and we’re going to be delving into the world of the Gothic satire or parody with ‘Northanger Abbey’. Though ‘Northanger Abbey’ is one of the last published Austen novels as it was published posthumously, she wrote it towards the late 18th Century when she was in her very early 20s, following her first visit to the city of Bath.
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.
It’s going to be an absolute treat revisiting this novel and looking at the Gothic from a whole new angle.
In this episode we discuss:
The jarring youth and innocence of Catherine Moorland reading her a decade on from last time
‘Northanger Abbey’’s position as a Gothic parody
The icky age gap rises again, but we give Jane a break because 1818 was a very different time
You can listen to it here:
TEXTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘Northanger Abbey’ by Jane Austen
‘Persuasion’ by Jane Austen
‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen
‘Emma’ by Jane Austen
‘Sense and Sensibility’ by Jane Austen
‘Mansfield Park’ by Jane Austen
‘Bookish: How Reading Shaped Our Lives’ by Lucy Mangan
‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ by Ann Radcliffe
‘It’s a Love Story’ by Annabel Monaghan
‘Legacy of Gods’ series by Rina Kent
OTHER MEDIA AND POP CULTURE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1995) and (2005)
‘Sense and Sensibility’ (1995)
‘Persuasion’ (2007)
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