Summary and comment on “Catherine Morland’s Gothic Delusions: A Defense of Northanger Abbey”
Summary and comment on
“Catherine Morland’s Gothic Delusions:
A Defense of Northanger Abbey”
Summary:
Jane Austen’s success or failure when introducing the Gothic burlesque into her heroine Catherine’s life, in Northanger Abbey, has been long debated. Most of the critics agree that the author did not get to join the burlesque element with the protagonist experiences successfully. Many of them also claim that if she had analysed and revised it as much as she did with Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, she would have get rid of that many extravagances we can find in this work. The general viewpoint is that the bizarre delusions that Catherine suffers from the moment in which she arrives at the Abbey are not properly connected with her previous life and experiences in Bath. According, for instance, to Anne Ehrenpreis, “Catherine’s adventures at Northanger are not a natural consequence of her reading”. For her, the burlesque scenes of the novel are opposed in topic and structure with the “young lady’s entrance into the world”1 that Jane Austen relates in the rest of the novel.
Becoming an adult, acquiring good sense and knowledge is another theme with which the author deals. There is a contrast between Catherine’s childhood innocence and the disenchantment of those ideals that growing up gives as a result. “The common feelings of common life” are put in contrast to a heroine’s “refined susceptibilities” and “tender emotions”i.
Catherine represents after all the heroine of the nineteenth century. Even if no one expects her to become a heroine, and because she has to deal with normal situations that every woman could be found in; she could be considered just a modern woman. But Catherine embodies this ideal of modern heroine as she learns to differentiate strange and obscure situations that happen in romantic fiction from reality. The Gothic situations at Northanger’s aim is to underline that Catherine could only find happiness by understanding and
“Catherine Morland’s Gothic Delusions:
A Defense of Northanger Abbey”
Summary:
Jane Austen’s success or failure when introducing the Gothic burlesque into her heroine Catherine’s life, in Northanger Abbey, has been long debated. Most of the critics agree that the author did not get to join the burlesque element with the protagonist experiences successfully. Many of them also claim that if she had analysed and revised it as much as she did with Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, she would have get rid of that many extravagances we can find in this work. The general viewpoint is that the bizarre delusions that Catherine suffers from the moment in which she arrives at the Abbey are not properly connected with her previous life and experiences in Bath. According, for instance, to Anne Ehrenpreis, “Catherine’s adventures at Northanger are not a natural consequence of her reading”. For her, the burlesque scenes of the novel are opposed in topic and structure with the “young lady’s entrance into the world”1 that Jane Austen relates in the rest of the novel.
Becoming an adult, acquiring good sense and knowledge is another theme with which the author deals. There is a contrast between Catherine’s childhood innocence and the disenchantment of those ideals that growing up gives as a result. “The common feelings of common life” are put in contrast to a heroine’s “refined susceptibilities” and “tender emotions”i.
Catherine represents after all the heroine of the nineteenth century. Even if no one expects her to become a heroine, and because she has to deal with normal situations that every woman could be found in; she could be considered just a modern woman. But Catherine embodies this ideal of modern heroine as she learns to differentiate strange and obscure situations that happen in romantic fiction from reality. The Gothic situations at Northanger’s aim is to underline that Catherine could only find happiness by understanding and