Average Rating: 
Rating: - I Quite Doat on Northanger Abbey!
Every time I read another Jane Austen novel, I get the insanely anachronistic urge to write her a letter, and tell her how I adore her work. I quite doat on Jane Austen!On a winter holiday in the fashionable resort town of Bath, 17-year old Catherine Morland welcomes everyone she meets into her impressionable, if somewhat dense heart. The refreshingly honest Tilneys (Henry and Eleanor) and the unapologetically vain Thorpes (John and Isabella) form her central acquaintances. "Northanger Abbey" is a charming metafiction in which Catherine, living in a prototypical small village, goes innocently into the world, and cannot help but have her perceptions altered. Catherine's obsession with gothic fiction and Austen's 'cliff notes' narrative technique work together to achieve a briskly-paced, and highly amusing story, unlike anything else of hers that I am familiar with. She does indeed satirize gothic fiction, but also uses this forum to poke gentle fun at the very people who read her own novels, and others like them. To that end, the novel is split between two different ways of reading and understanding - that of Catherine and that of her accidental lover, Henry Tilney. Catherine is the all-believing, undiscerning method, willing to equate the superficial with the real. Henry is the more sophisticated intellect, with a view to the underlying realities of situation and personality. One notable result of these competing epistemologies, is Austen's insistence on acknowledging and legitimizing the literary merit of female authors, and the earnest call for female scholastic and social education beyond knitting, dancing, and romance. To have the fullest understanding of "Northanger Abbey," it is advisable to take some time to first read Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho," then compare Catherine to Radcliffe's Emily St. Aubert. Those who dislike "Northanger Abbey" because it is not like "Pride and Prejudice" or "Emma" would place too severe of a limit on the range and depth of Austen's authorial skill. This novel purposely stands on its own as a challenge to the comfort of traditional romance, and is a welcome change of pace.
Rating: - Typical Jane Austen?
The story describes the development of a young girl, Catherine Morland. She is the daughter of a clergyman, not very rich nor especially handsome or clever. At the age of seventeen she is allowed to go with Mr. and Mrs. Allen to Bath, were all the upper class of England spends the holidays. She meets there a plenty of young people, for example John and Isabella Thorpe, Eleanor Tilney and her brother Henry. They all become friends, but John and Henry take a deeper interest in Catherine. She has to make up her decision: The young student John or the earnest reverend Henry, and soon it's clear. Catherine goes with Eleanor and Henry to stay for a visit at the abbey where they are living with their father, Captain Tilney, while Isabella ingages with Catherines brother James. As Catherine has read many novels about misteries (f.e. "The misteries of Udolpho") she expects to find something puzzling and amazing in this old abbey. Everywhere she looks for a strange thing, but never finds anything. Even Henry tells her once how stupid she is to believe in such things, and now Catherine has a more realistic vue to the world around her. But then she receives a letter from her brother James where he writes that Isabella has left him, and moreover Catherine has to leave the abbey because Captain Tilney has found out that she isn't as rich as he thought and because of that not adapted to become Henry's wife. Through all these experiences Catherine grows up, and at the end of the story she is a very different woman than at the beginning.
Rating:  - just not good
Many of the references Austen made in Northanger Abbey were meant to be satirical towards the gothic writing style prevalent in her time. Certain elements of wordplay in her characters' dialogue will also sound dated to a modern reader. For example, Catherine describes a popular gothic novel as being "Horrible", which can be taken as "Awful" or that the book was scary, which is a way the word was used in the author's time. Having said this, the book is slow, and is not as easy and interesting to read as her other novels, which can be explained by saying that this is her first attempt, and improvement was inevitable. The characters were not well-developed; I didn't understand the love-interest and I didn't believe that these two people were suited for each other. Again, she improved later. If you choose to read this book, try to get an edition with notes on the text.It will help a great deal in clarifying that which is now a centuries-old inside joke.
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