Northanger Abbey - Essay Example

‘Northanger Abbey’ is the first published novel by Jane Austen. Though, she started writing ‘Sense and Sensibilities and ‘Pride and Prejudice before the novel in discussion but ‘Northanger Abbey’ was published before these two novels. ‘Northanger Abbey’ is a parody of Gothic novels and is quite significant from a literary aspect. ‘Northanger Abbey, as a fiction bears the theme of the difference between reality and fantasy and puts forward a question on the thin line of difference that prevails between trust and mistrust. The novel encompasses strong morale, and guidance for the choice of a true companion and shows how other considerations are merely shallow. ‘Northanger Abbey’ can be treated as a torchbearer of the Austen canon. Very rightly, it upholds or indicates the theme of Jane’s forthcoming novels. As a literary piece, the novel has great value. ‘Northanger Abbey’ encompasses within its plot, a few frivolities of Eighteenth-century literature and encapsulates many of the contemporary fiction and their genre.

The novel, ‘Northanger Abbey’ is often claimed by critics as “earliest and least perfect”. It is also criticized that ‘Northanger Abbey’, “lacks the narrative sophistication of the later works”. But the main fact is quite different from all this criticism. Within its limited scope, Austen tried to portray a discursive description of what fiction might be. He precisely shows the way that how a novel should be written and most importantly, read. The heroine of ‘Northanger Abbey’ Catherine is deliberately portrayed as a complete deviation from the conventional heroines of Eighteenth-century fiction Catherine is simple and notably undistinguished. She is a girl from a middle-class family and she falls in love with her hero, much before the hero of Austen’s ‘Northanger Abbey’ put any of his serious thoughts on the girl. All these deviations prove that Austen desperately wanted to reshape and re-evaluate eighteenth-century fiction and its reading pattern along with the writing style. This is also a vital reason for manifesting the plot of ‘Northanger Abbey’ in a fashion of a parody of Gothic Fiction.

‘Northanger Abbey’ is indeed an important literary document; purely concomitant to the Radcliffe popularity, and is truly a literary landmark. It is more than a mere debunking sentimental Gothic novel. It is a serious attempt to depose a narrative technique that challenges the stress on characters by Richardson and the omnipotent control of Fielding. Indeed, ‘Northanger Abbey’ puts forward a realism that is not presented as a substitute for Gothic but marks truly the beginning of a new tradition of realism. Austen’s realism not only produces a new variety of narrative techniques but also offers a kind of realism in light of what is self–reflexive the most important theory about reading which is put forward in ‘Northanger Abbey’ is that it analyzes the meaning of a heroine and “in training for a heroine”, Austen puts forward, perhaps the most dominant theme of ‘Northanger Abbey’, “the appropriation and practice of reading skills” (Miller, “A Novel Handbook Narrative Techniques In ‘Northanger Abbey’”).

Catherine’s misreading is an indication of a sense of personal insignificance and that of a girl with a prospect of a heroine, who at the primary level welcomes her status as one “almost pretty today” with a satisfactory exclamation mark.

Within its limited scope and operation, Jane Austen has successfully shown the working and manifestation of a novel. Deviating largely from Eighteenth-century conventional norms of fiction and putting together an extensive theory of writing and reading technique, Austen has produced a document that has served as a vital thesis in the world of literary criticism and theories.