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Jane Austen's first novel, "Northanger Abbey"--published posthumously in 1818--tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen's fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about love, life, and the heady power of literature. The satirical "Northanger Abbey" pokes fun at the gothic novel while earnestly emphasizing caution to the female sex. This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the first edition of 1818. "From the Trade Paperback edition."… (més)
upstairsgirl: This is the book that Austen's heroine is reading (and which Austen is wryly mocking) in Northanger Abbey. Fun to read with each other; Udolpho is possibly less fun on its own.
It helps to know that this was probably Austen's first book, so if I didn't like it that doesn't mean I'm not an Austen fan. It also helps to know that the plight of upper class women at that time was that they were entirely dependent on men for financial security. Still, I really can't get past the vapid characters and their pointless existence. Okay, our heroine was 17 years old and learned a lot along the way, possibly becoming less vapid over the course of the story. But geez! ( )
Jane Austin had a knack for writing humorous stories while at the same time drawing attention to some critical and controversial social and cultural issues of England in the 19th Century.
"Northanger Abbey," a novella of 176 pages, tells the story of a middle class young woman, Catherine Moreland. Born and raised in an isolated village, at 17 years of age Catherine has the opportunity to vacation with a neighborhood childless couple. The trip to Bath, a well known resort, is a whole new experience for Catherine, Truly an adventure. She meets new friends and with very little previous social experience must learn all the rules of social etiquette, navigate the social terrain of luncheons, formal balls, and various other outings.
The wonderful aspect about reading anything by Jane Austin is the authenticity - dropping back in time is like entering a time capsule for a vivid picture of what life was like around the year 1800. The good, the bad, and the ugly! The strict protocol for social life, and the lack of options, especially for young women. Jane Austin focuses on the class-war struggle and the antiquated idea of people being encouraged to stay within their own social strata.
On the humorous side, Jane Austin points out the introduction of Gothic Fiction in England. Catherine is an avid reader and her imagination goes wild when she is invited to visit Northanger Abbey.
This isn’t Jane Austin’s best novel. The ending is contrived and just a little too saccharine. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining and relaxing read.
Protagonist Catherine Morland is invited by her wealthy neighbors to accompany them to the city of Bath, where she participates in the social season. Catherine develops friendships and a romantic interest. Her brother arrives from Oxford and become engaged to one of her friends. Catherine is young and naïve. She takes people at face value. She learns through painful experience that some people cannot be trusted.
The book is separated into two parts. The first, in Bath, introduces the characters and sets them in motion. The second, at Northanger Abbey, provides the majority of the conflicts and resolution. The writing is emotive, and either I am getting used to circuitous sentences or this book is told in a more straight-forward manner than, say, Sense and Sensibility, which I recently read.
Austen was obviously a fan of how reading can broaden horizons. She pokes gentle fun at the gothic novel. Published in 1818, during the Regency era, Austen comments on the issues of her day – morality, character, social mores, and limits on a woman’s agency. I had somehow missed reading this classic before now. I found it delightful. ( )
I've read this book before, ages ago as a part of a Gothic Literature course I took in college. This most recent read was for family bedtime story tie. There are some very funny moments and biting satire here (mostly of gothic and popular literature), especially early on. Towards the end it starts to feel like her more famous novels, with everyone more or less getting their just desserts, but perhaps a little less deftly. ( )
This was a delightful, bright and fun read and has several gothic passages, quite extraordinary for Austen as far as I know. The story is about Catherine, a young and naive woman who makes her debut at Bath and discovers the dangers of letting herself being swept away in gothic phantasies. But of course, it being Austen, it centers on whether or not families have fortunes, and linked to that: on marriage.
I loved how Austen addresses the reader several times, it had the same kind of effect that Trollope had in The Warden which I read right before this one; you get as close to the writer as possible. Even standing at Austen’s grave like I once did, she did not feel as close then as she did here, when she addressed the reader, i.e. me.
Although I noticed all the mansplaining of male characters throughout the novel which made me roll my eyes, I feel I cannot blame Austen for it, not in the time she lived and not when she did so much for women writers during her time and how she set the stage for those who came after. Here she presents herself through her main protagonist as a strong defender of the novel as a literary form in a time when it was rather looked down upon.
If she only would have known how revered she would be, worldwide, 200 years after her life was over!
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No one who ever had seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.
Citacions
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"Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
...but while I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable.
Young people do not like to be always thwarted.
Give me but a little cheerful company, let me only have the company of the people I love, let me be where I like and with whom I like, and the devil may take the rest
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them.
...no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared...
Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding--joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all--it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes' mouths, their thoughts and designs--the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books. [on reading history]
To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
...if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad...
... why he should say one thing so positively, and mean another all the while, was most unaccountable! How were people, at that rate, to be understood?
But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.
The manuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning's prediction, how was it to be accounted for? What could it contain? To whom could it relate? By what means could it have been so long concealed? And how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! Till she had made herself mistress of its contents, however, she could have neither repose nor comfort; and with the sun's first rays she was determined to peruse it. But many were the tedious hours which must yet intervene. She shuddered, tossed about in her bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. … The housemaid's folding back her window-shutters at eight o'clock the next day was the sound which first roused Catherine; and she opened her eyes, wondering that they could ever have been closed, on objects of cheerfulness; her fire was already burning, and a bright morning had succeeded the tempest of the night. Instantaneously, with the consciousness of existence, returned her recollection of the manuscript; and springing from the bed in the very moment of the maid's going away, she eagerly collected every scattered sheet which had burst from the roll on its falling to the ground, and flew back to enjoy the luxury of their perusal on her pillow. She now plainly saw that she must not expect a manuscript of equal length with the generality of what she had shuddered over in books, for the roll, seeming to consist entirely of small disjointed sheets, was altogether but of trifling size, and much less than she had supposed it to be at first. Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles with little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth presented nothing new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced her in each. Two others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure scarcely more interesting, in letters, hair-powder, shoe-string, and breeches-ball. And the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first cramp line, "To poultice chestnut mare"—a farrier's bill! Such was the collection of papers (left perhaps, as she could then suppose, by the negligence of a servant in the place whence she had taken them) which had filled her with expectation and alarm, and robbed her of half her night's rest! She felt humbled to the dust.
Darreres paraules
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To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.
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This LT work, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, is the original form of this novel. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey [ISBN 1854598376] is a dramatization of this work by Tim Luscombe. Please do not combine the two; thank you.
This "work" contains copies without enough information. The title might refer to the book by Jane Austen or a (movie) adaptation, so this "work" should not be combined with any of them. If you are an owner of one of these copies, please add information such as author name or ISBN that can help identify its rightful home. After editing your copy, it might still need further separation and recombination work. Feel free to ask in the Combiners! group if you have questions or need help. Thanks.
Editor de l'editorial
Creadors de notes promocionals a la coberta
Llengua original
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Jane Austen's first novel, "Northanger Abbey"--published posthumously in 1818--tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen's fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about love, life, and the heady power of literature. The satirical "Northanger Abbey" pokes fun at the gothic novel while earnestly emphasizing caution to the female sex. This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the first edition of 1818. "From the Trade Paperback edition."