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By Shahrooz Chowdhury
The Gothic mode includes novels written in a style popular the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This is in the time frame when Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey was released. It is a novel about novels and novel readers, an ironic parody of the Gothic genre, satirising the world of the British upper classes, using humour and gross exaggeration to expose their follies. She mocks many of the regular conventions of Gothic novels, such as the unnatural heroines, the predictable horror scenes and the gloomy settings.
Heroines are an integral part of the Gothic novel. ... Also a symbol of purity and goodness in the dark and sinister Gothic world. ... The character of the gothic heroine is seldom changed by the traumas and the shocks that she experiences. ...
Generally terror is introduced into Gothic novels through the prominent use unsolved murders, women being at the mercy of wicked patriarchs and the mystery shrouded secret doors, cabinets, etc. ...
The setting found in Gothic works is normally of a crumbling old castle or church far away and in another time period to distance the reader from the story. ... If it was an Abbey then its purpose was to house nuns or monks, after which it was sold or abandoned and later purchased by a rich baron who is generally a villain. One may also note that in a regular gothic novel the chance of it raining at the site is extremely high so the dark atmosphere is established.
Austen would exaggerate the conventions to such an extent that anyone could notice the ridiculousness in these ideologies and see her point of view. Austen mocks the conventions of horror by ridiculously exaggerating the threats and the mysteriousness of everything in the abbey and by building suspense only to hit an anti-climax. ... She later admits that when she came to Northanger Abbey she longed to be scared, and when she found nothing scary there, she invented something herself.
Although the actual crime turns out to be nonexistent, Austen captures some of the psychological tension that is common in Gothic novels by showing Catherines delusions. So although she parodies the gothic genre, Austen actually uses this tension (a Gothic technique) in order to mock the horror found in other novels, such as The Mysteries of Udolpho.
The supernatural events, or rather the absence of supernatural events, in Northanger Abbey is important to the novel as a parody.
Approximate Word count = 1951
Approximate Pages = 7.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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