Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen’s first novel gives Catherine Morland the opportunity to make new friends, meet romantic interests and live the mysteries of her Gothic novels on a coming-of-age tale. Gothic novels consist, for the most part, of a gloomy setting, supernatural beings, curses or prophecies, damsels in distress, romance and heroes. Austen utilizes all of these elements in her novel with a twist and turns them into an ordinary, mundane element.
A satire is defined as the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues, intended to arouse amused contempt for its target. Northanger Abbey is a satire because it mocks eighteenth-century literature, specifically Radcliffian Gothic literature. Furthermore, Northanger Abbey is also a parody, imitating Ann Radcliff’s The Mysteries of Udolpho by creating a similar plot, tone, and characters. “Like many novels of the eighteenth century, Austen’s work mocks the sentimental novel.
Jane Austen teases Ann Radcliffe’s style from beginning to end. Yet she does not totally reject the model she is mocking. Indeed, by mocking Ann Radcliffe’s moral substance, one cannot be sure whether she praises virtue or villainy” (Chevaleyre 21). In the novel, Austen has a distinct narrator, one that speaks to the reader. Austen writes: “it may be stated, for the reader’s more certain information lest the following pages should otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is meant to be; that her heat was affectionate […] and her mind about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is” (Austen Chapter 2).
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Furthermore, the reader is told from the beginning of the story that Catherine is not a heroine, so the parody starts to shine through. Catherine can be described as an anti-heroine. “She misunderstands everything, gets excited and ultimately becomes disappointed. She believes herself to be educated and sensible because she reads books and yet she is the one who is fooled by everybody” (Chevaleyre 17). Even though she is not a heroine, when she reads the Gothic novels, she is transported to an imaginary world where she believes she is. Another element of Gothic novel is setting in old castle containing secret passages, trap doors, secret rooms, dark or hidden staircases, or ruined sections. The castle is seemingly abandoned, sometimes occupied.
The Northanger Abbey stands in the book for an old castle but only in Catherine’s fantasy. She imagines the Northanger Abbey as an old building full of ancient legends. Her imaginations of the Abbey are more mysterious than the Abbey really is. Her expectations, supported by Henry’s fictional story of an enchanted castle, clash with what Catherine really sees, which disappoints her. As she wants to experience something similar as heroines of Gothic novels, the discovery that the Northanger Abbey is not mysterious but common modern building leads to her disappointment.
For instance, in her guest room, Catherine finds an old chest. She is curious and excited and one night decides to finally look through it to see what mysteries this incredible chest holds. But once she looks through it, she realizes that it is mostly empty aside from a laundry list and some receipts. She feels fooled by her imagination. Once again, Catherine lives in her imaginary Gothic world when she suspects that Captain Tilney might have murdered Henry’s mother. Henry finds Catherine lurking around the house, and when she tells him her suspicion he feels utterly offended. He tells her that they live in England and that those stories happen elsewhere, not there. Catherine finally realizes that all this time her imagination was controlling her view on life and she feels completely foolish.
There, Catherine’s perspective changes and promises to herself to stop living in the Gothic fantasy she had lived in once. Austen here is mocking the innocence and imagination of the damsel in distress, showing her that there is no distress after all. “Austen’s novels mainly portray lives of the upper-middle classes or aristocratic families in country, with the visits, conversations, balls, and weddings as the main events. It shows her sensitive reaction to contemporary life. She came from an upper-middle class family and pulled on intimately known environment” (Jurtíková 12).
While coming from a similar environment, Austen was able to connect the ideas about her life and the stories she was writing. “She reflected her own experiences in different characters, dialogues and scenes. She often wrote about marriage- anxious girls, their mothers, who work off their energy by chasing rich potential husbands. The other characters are usually idlers, crawlers, cheaters, snobs, dullheads, busybodies, and gossips. The main characters are usually dynamic and fully developed, while the minor characters are flatter and static and become alive through her use of satire and irony” (Jurtíková 12).
Works Cited
- Aurélie Chevaleyre. Gothic Humour and Satire in Northanger Abbey. Literature. 2012.
- Austen, Jane. “Northanger Abbey.” Northanger Abbey, Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/121/121-h/121-h.htm#link2HCH0002.
- Jurtíková, Marcela. Northanger Abbey as a Parody of the Gothic Novel. Masaryk University Press. 2006.
