Customer Reviews

Penguin Classics Northanger Abbey

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A parody of the Gothic tradition, Northanger Abbey is, in my opinion, Austen's worst novel: the heroine is insipid, and what happens to her seems contrived and overdone. And yet Austen's talent is still apparent here, for the language still sparkles with wit and with the occasional gem of observation. I read it so that I could say that I'd read all of Austen's novels, and I'm glad I did. I'll reread it in the years to come.

I don't know whether it was because I took two months to complete this book, but this novel was a typical story about a girl named Catherine who likes Henry, but James likes her, and tries to separate her from Henry. This novel does tell you a great deal about the time period in which it was written: the 1800s. For example, a girl's only objective was to get married, and the only thing women did was gossip. This Broadview edition is great; there are detailed explanations of words on the same page in which they occur, instead of being near the back of the book. Also, the pages make the text easy to read.

The heroine in this novel is Catherine Morland, who is just an average girl with straightforward manners and not an ounce of pretension; yet, she has an outrageously vivid imagination. This is cleverly and Austen-intended, I believe, to purposely deviate from the conventional heroines of the times.

The story begins with Catherine joining a friend of the family, Mrs. Allen, for a vacation at her home in Bath. Her days are filled with socializing, taking walks and especially spending time at the 'Pump- room', where she meets the rather hard-edged Henry Tilney. Catherine's simple, yet direct and opinionated responses and approaches in conversation lead her to distancing Henry for a while.

Realizing that she has feelings for him, Catherine begins to wish she could see Henry again and does everything possible for that to happen. Meanwhile she befriends Isabella Thorpe who shares her passion for books and poetry. As the two become inseparable, Catherine feels close enough to Isabella to tell her all about her feelings for Henry Tilney'

In fulfilling her dreams of being with Henry, Catherine's journey evolves through a fiasco of events revealing true personalities, feelings and deceptions. Other important characters that help bring this about involve John Thorpe, Isabella's brother, who is full of mischief and schemes. As well, Catherine's brother James, is one who has a love-story of his own to mourn over as his sister begins to put all pieces of the puzzle together. Just to add to life's intricacies, Henry and Catherine become at odds about a dilemma, caused mainly by Catherine's imagination. The couple's difficulties do not stop there as problems get compounded by family misunderstandings.

Confusion of events? You bet. This story is filled with the ups-and downs of young love, anxious situations and very comical moments. Catherine was a girl before her times, which makes situations heartening as well as endearing and perfectly understandable. I gasped, laughed and truly enjoyed this Jane Austen novel. It's the perfect introduction to the author's subsequent masterpieces.

[...].

I'm surprised at some of the negative reviews on here saying the book is boring, the dialogue annoying, and the plot lacking. I'd say they've missed the point of this book. It does have a good plot, but it's more realistic than the usual story. Yes, it may be more commonplace, but I found it refreshing. The story focuses on conversation and people and Catherine, which I enjoyed because it was so skillfully done. The characters rang so true, Henry Tilney made me laugh out loud, Catherine was sweet and funny and the ending was wonderful. I loved this book! It's my second favourite Austen book next to Emma.

I have recently wanted to read Jane Austen again for some time. I had previously read two of her other novels (Pride and Prejudice and Emma) but that was a very long time ago. I've now decided I am not a Jane Austen fan. This is a rather average romance story which is said to be a parody of the classic Gothic novels. The plot (what there was of it) was decent enough but I just felt like I was wading through pages of drivel. I found the dialogue irritating, the banter between the men and women just made me want to scream. Although the style of writing and the language used by the author is indeed beautiful I found the characters immensely irritating. Austen is not for me.

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.

One of Jane Austen's best attributes as a writer is her rapier wit and sense of humor, which especially shows itself in her earlier novels, "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility". "Northanger Abbey", which preceded both of them but was published only after her death, is a clever parody of the Gothic novel as written by Anne Radcliffe: full of dark, stormy nights, ancient castles with secret passages and locked rooms hiding unspeakable crimes, damsels in distress, and all the rest. Austen's heroine, Catherine Morland, has read a few too many such books, and we meet her at the age of seventeen, emerging from the chrysalis of adolescence as a passably pretty young woman with her head full of romantic notions and not much else. When she meets the hero of her dreams, Henry Tilney, a surprisingly level-headed young man, Catherine realizes that life as melodrama is a poor second to life in reality. Catherine is fascinated at the prospect of visiting Northanger Abbey -- what mysteries and horrors must be waiting to be discovered -- only to be brought up short by the pedestrian intrusion of real life (a locked cabinet which might have held vials of poison or, even better, a skeleton, turns out to hold nothing more dangerous than a laundry list).

"Northanger Abbey" is a good first novel but it is by no means Jane Austen's best, and Catherine is not as interesting a heroine as Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Watson or Elinor Dashwood; she's a somewhat shallow, undeveloped young lady who lacks their depth and their intelligence. But she's a likeable heroine; unlike Fanny Price, Catherine doesn't try to be perfect nor judge others for failing to be so, and unlike Emma Watson, she's not meddling in everyone else's business. She can admit when she's at fault and she has a generous spirit. We like to imagine her as the tomboy Austen pictures her in her childhood, rolling down hills and chasing her brothers and sisters. Austen provided a number of interesting supporting characters: Henry's amiable sister Elinor, his insufferably snobbish and narrow-minded father General Tilney, and the artful, heartless flirt Isabella Thorpe. By the book's end, Catherine has grown up a bit; she sees life as it is and realizes Henry's steady common sense is infinitely preferable to the histrionics of any Gothic hero. Jane Austen's first book was a promising introduction of better things to come.

This book was a hard one for me to start. Not in the tradional sense of being a difficult begining. Truthfully I thouroughly enjoyed the book from the start. (The opening paragraph was brilliant in my opinion). No, I had done something very wrong. I watched the movie first. Not that this is always wrong,(altough should be avioded when possible), I have watched some movies that have left me looking foward to the inspiring lituarature such as PRIDE & PREJUDICE or DAVID COPPERFIELD. But this movie punched me, left me reeling, never wanting to read a book that could produce a film like this.
Flash foward a few years. My wife being an avid Austen reader was also hesitant about reading it. But she took the plunge and gave it a go. While it was not her favorite book, she enjoyed it enough to recomend it to me, saying it was almost completly different from the book.
So with a little less trepidation I eventually decided I would read it. Amazing. I really liked this book. Why had I never wanted to read this book? How could they make a movie like that from this kind of material to work with? Why don't they get the people who did the PRIDE & PREJUDICE mini-series to do this?
My only problem with it was that it ended way to fast for me. Everything seemed to be resolved and finished in the last two or three pages, with very little of how thier lives turn out in the end. But if that is the only thing you can truly critize in a book, then I think your holding an excellent book.

When I was a kid, I loved to watch Wishbone, the terrier that used Classic Literature as a kind to life. One episode centered around Northanger Abbey. It was my favorite episode. I would play with my friends, that I was Wishbone, and my friend was the heroine, Catherine. That left me with a longing for the real thing. Well, the real thing is much better than the Wishbone version. Some may be surprised, but this is my favorite Jane Austen novel. Emma is second, and the P and P. I dunno, maybe it is that it is funny, or the suspense, but it is highly recommended.

More lighthearted and less polished than Austen's other novels, "Northanger Abbey" is the chronicle of its heroine's adventures in turn-of-the-nineteenth-century British genteel society. Catherine, of marriageable age and reasonably attractive and well bred, goes on holiday to Bath, where she meets the gentlemanly Mr. Tilney and befriends the fickle Isabelle and her callow brother John. Her adventures in Bath and, later, in the home of her new acquaintances comprise the plot of Austen's mocking tale.

As usual, Austen is mocking the meeting-and-mating customs of then-contemporary Britain. But she is also mocking the gothic novels of the day: Catherine, influenced by the lowbrow literature she reads, is forever attributing dark motives to her acquaintances and skeletons to their closets. "Northanger Abbey" is unusual among Austen's works in that it attacks not only the society in which its heroine operates, but the heroine herself. Catherine is easily manipulated and slow to learn from her mistakes, and she bumbles into her eventual happy ending completely by accident, none the wiser for her troubles. And Austen makes clear, at the book's opening, that she does not wish to attack the novelists who write the books from which Catherine derives many of her false ideas: the error is Catherine's misapplication of the stories' lessons.

Although it was not published until after its author's death, "Northanger Abbey" is clearly a first novel. Its tone is different from the main body of Austen's work, and its quality is lower. While a pleasant read, the book is not particularly compelling and would probably be most enjoyable for Austen aficionados seeking a comprehensive study of her work.