What Is The Narrative Techniques Used In Northanger Abbey

Austen now introduces the reader into the lifestyle of Catherine Morland, and how her years have been spent quite different than the made assumption of a heroine. Austen decides on word choice to describe Catherine and her parents, to the complete opposite of what the average hero would be described as. Austen selects his word choice as, “for they [the Morland's] were very plain”, “She had a thin awkward figure, sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair”. The way Austen chooses to describe Catherine is not the common strong, muscular, genius, life changing, hero you hear about on an everyday basis. The image given by Austen on Catherine's appearance is carefully chosen to remain in

This article analyzes the way Austen portrays women in her novels. Kruger mentions that Jane Austen’s work is often deprived by the

Jane Austen was a Georgian era author who was best known for her novels that commented on social issues and class, and Northanger Abbey is no exception. Austen’s social commentary is apparent in this novel’s plot, as the reader follows a seventeen-year-old protagonist, Catherine Morland, as she matures and forms intimate relationships with fellow characters in an England town called Bath. Marriage between characters in the novel is heavily based on wealth, and because of England’s unstable economy at the time, marrying into wealth meant maintaining a high social class and economic stability for the characters. The importance of economic prosperity and social rank heavily influenced marriage in 19th century England, and this idea bourgeoisie classism and marrying for wealth is contradicted by Austen in her novel, Northanger Abbey.

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is frequently described as a novel about reading—reading novels and reading people—while Pride and Prejudice is said to be a story about love, about two people overcoming their own pride and prejudices to realize their feelings for each other. If Pride and Prejudice is indeed about how two stubborn youth have misjudged each other, then why is it that this novel is so infrequently viewed to be connected to Austen’s original novel about misjudgment and reading one’s fellows, Northanger Abbey? As one of Austen’s first novels, Northanger Abbey is often viewed as a “prototype” to her later novels, but it is most often compared to Persuasion (Brown 50). However, if read discerningly, one can see in Pride and

Richardson explains how this confusion was relevant of the historical and cultural context of Austen’s era. Both the Gothic and the sentimental genres were regularly criticised for influencing readers to project fictional elements into real life. As Richardson explains, the Gothic was singled out for condemnation through its ‘thematics of female constraint and persecution and its fictive indulgence in forbidden lusts and passions, and the sentimental novel, with its ideal or ‘romantic’ picture of life and its over-valuation of erotic love as the key to female happiness (Richardson 2005:399). This projection is reflected in Northanger Abbey when Catherine is invited to Northanger Abbey: ‘Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling words, and wound up Catherine’s feelings to the highest point of ecstasy’ ( Austen pp.99-100). The use of ‘ecstasy’ reflects Catherine’s excessive personality and self-transcendence. Catherine’s gothic idealist vision of the abbey and her pursuit of pleasure, signifies her lack of self-directedness in which she dismisses her own control of life and puts herself in the position of the gothic heroine as portrayed in her reading of Radcliffe’s ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’. The prominent role of ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ in Northanger Abbey is highly symbolic in representing Austen’s concerns of the excesses of sensibility and the gothic and how they can distort the reader’s interpretation of life. Barker-Benfield (p.111) highlights how ‘Radcliffe’s Mysteries typically hinted at its apparent dangers but continued to convey its tenets. And no one could prevent readers from identifying with figures the author intended as warnings against sensibility’s ‘excesses’.

From my point of view, Jane Austen should be seen as a ‘feminist’ writer. As she wrote in one of her novel Persuasion, she considers that ‘Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything’ (Anne Elliot, in Jane Austen’s Persuasion). Such feminist ideas are expressed in many of her literary works. In her another novel Northanger Abbey, there are various issues discussed, which include not only marriage, social criticism and Gothic, but also feminism as well. The essay is to discuss Jane Austen and her feminist thoughts by analyzing Northanger Abbey.

The vulnerability of Jane Eyre's childhood, loss of innocence and exposure to death, rejection, abuse and disease at such an early age due to her initial complicated family background, being an orphan and thus avoiding poverty through her aunt’s charity, shows the initial 'violent' gothic convention used in this novel.

To most, Pride and Prejudice is a work of romance and social satire; an apex in wit and dialogue. There are no spectres at Pemberley nor is there an insatiable tyrant or haunted castle at Derbyshire. However, there is a sense of fear amongst many of the characters. The houses are often large and hiding a painful secret. And love, at least between a few, transcends the boundary into the supernatural; or at least has elements thereof. Contrary to its popular, and overly common, definition and perception, I will argue that Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (hereon referred to as P&P) is an established piece of Gothic fiction, as it

Austen has set out to save the rising art form of the novel. In this address to the reader she glorifies what a novel should be: the unrestrained expression of words conveying the wide range of raw human emotion. This veneration of the novel is necessary to the development of Catherine's fiction-loving character as it justifies the narrator's right to remain fond of this flawed heroine.

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey establishes the inner feeling of a woman based on her own personal experience which provides a vivid glance into her perspective. Correspondingly, it reinstates Gothic novels as an reflection marginalized by the experiences of women living in the upper class. For contemporary modern day, Northanger Abbey functions as a warning, depicting the danger of amorous and sexual exploitation from the opportunistic characters within a social environment. These dangers are a realistic theme even in today's society marking potential threat for women. Mostly importantly, it serves as a device that's depicts the social separation between the companionship of woman and the inhuman acknowledgement of women as objects, which fosters the necessarily development for both men and

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is essentially the “coming of age” story of Catherine Morland, a sympathetic yet naïve young girl who spends some time away from home at the impressionable age of seventeen. As Catherine matures in the town of Bath and at Northanger Abbey, she learns to forgo immature childhood fantasies in favor of the solid realities of adult life, thus separating falsehood from truth. This theme is expressed in a couple of ways, most obviously when Catherine’s infatuation with Gothic novels causes her to nearly ruin her relationship with Henry Tilney: her imagination finally goes too far, and she wrongly suspects General Tilney of murdering his late wife. The theme is less apparent

While this text is set from a third person viewpoint, it also uses an interesting narrative technique, which is known as 'free indirect discourse' or 'free indirect style'. This is when a third person story uses certain features of first person speech. This style is different in the fact that introductory expressions such as, ‘she thought’, and ‘they said’, are not used. Using this technique allows a third person text to utilise a first person perspective, portraying the characters thoughts and words more directly.

Jane Austen is well known as a novelist for her satirical representation of female characters in late Georgian society. During this period, novel writing and reading was still a controversial topic, and as such was incorporated in her book Northanger Abbey (1817), which has at its core a young female protagonist obsessed with novels. We can clearly interpret Northanger Abbey as Austen’s satirical response to the social conventions decrying novel reading, as she uses an intrusive narrator and more subtle supplementary techniques to comment on and satirize the debate surrounding novels.

Set in 1798 England, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is the “coming of age” story of Catherine Morland, a naïve young girl who spends time away from home at the malleable age of seventeen. Catherine’s introduction into society begins when Mr. and Mrs. Allen, her neighbors in Fullerton, invite her to accompany them as they vacation in the English town of Bath. While in Bath, Catherine spends her time visiting newly-made friends, such as Isabella Thorpe, and attending balls and plays. Catherine soon after is introduced to Henry Tilney, a handsome yet mysterious clergyman whom she finds herself attracted to. Catherine also befriends Eleanor

Most novels just want to pull the reader in, and make them forget that they are reading a novel, but Austen does not allow this. The very first line in Northanger Abbey is “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine” (1). By pointing out that the main character is supposed to be the heroine, Austen draws attention to the fact that this is a novel. However, while Catherine is in fact a heroine, it is also states from the beginning that she does not match the expectations of the average heroine. So right from the beginning, the reader knows that while this is a novel, it is not going to be a typical one. It is in fact, going to parodying and critiquing some common aspects of novels. Austen continues on, and not so subtly points out the ways that Catherine differs from the heroines normally found in novels.