Northanger Abbey. An analysis of the novel and novel readers.

Abstract

The aim of this work is to read Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey from different perspectives, indeed the work is divided into three chapters and each one focuses on a different aspect. The first analyses the differences and the similarities between the novel and the two literary genres it parodies, the sentimental and the Gothic. The references are both to the literary theory and to the episodes of the story which take place in the two settings of the novel, Bath and the Abbey. The focus will be mainly on the protagonist’s behaviour but other characters as Isabella Thorpe will be taken into account as long as they represent a meaningful example for the parodied genre. The second chapter provides a detailed examination of the characters, starting from Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney and their love story; continuing with a comparison between the Thorpes and the Tilneys siblings, as representative of opposing values; to conclude with the villain of the novel, the General, and his complex relationship with his children Henry, Eleanor and Frederick. Finally, the last chapter first discusses the protagonist’s intellectual growth inside the novel, and then explores the psychological insight of the reading process, based on a psychoanalytic study applied to literary theory. The conclusions locate Jane Austen’s defence of novels and of novel readers in the historical background of the 18th century, with particular attention dedicated to her role as a female writer.