Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen

Young Catherine Morland begins her story with a trip to Bath. She makes a variety of new acquaintances, including flirtatious Isabella, pompous John Thorpe, and kind, sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney. The Tilneys invite her to their father’s home, Northanger Abbey, where Catherine’s love of Gothic literature leads her to imagine horror behind every corner. The gullible small-town girl must learn to distinguish fantasy from fact and live in the real world.

TBH… I kinda hated it.

I’ll cut to the chase: Northanger Abbey is my least favorite Austen book so far. I recognize the merits of the writing, but as far as entertainment or enjoyment goes… well, I just plain didn’t like it.

The main character is simple, immature, and naive. She’s lovable, but after so long it gets very, very frustrating. She spends the first 2/3 of the book on vacation in Bath with one real friend, Mrs. Allen, and one very obviously false “friend” who she openly trusts and likes, because she’s so entirely gullible. They talk about fashion and boys in absolutely meaningless paragraphs upon paragraphs of dialogue.

As for Isabella’s brother John Thorpe, kudos to Austen for writing a character that makes Mr. Collins look like enjoyable company. I never want to hear the name of John Thorpe again in my life. It’s a credit to Austen’s writing of the character, but made my reading experience worse. Odious man.

The Tilneys were delightful people. I just wish we’d seen more of them, and earlier in the novel. Once Catherine arrives at the Abbey, I did enjoy the story much better.

I adored Henry. Every scene with him was wonderful, and I wish he was more present in the actual plot and story. Wanting to see where his story led was the main reason I didn’t give up on this book.

Disappointed expectations

If you, like I was, are under the impression the story is “a parody/critique of Gothic literature about a girl who visits an Abbey and must learn the difference between fiction and reality”… well, technically, I guess that’s not wrong, but boy did the setup take forever. She didn’t even go to the Abbey until chapter 20!

The “main character gets fancy ideas of horror and mystery due to confusing books with reality” storyline, which I thought would be the bulk of the book, took literally two chapters.

Honestly, the pacing felt so off throughout the book. Long, pointless conversations in Bath filled chapters at the beginning, but the love story subplot almost all happened quite abruptly at the end. It was set up well, don’t get me wrong, but then the payoff felt rushed. Not to mention that the oft-described main plot of the story, as mentioned above, actually only took two chapters.

This was my main issue, I think — I spent forever just waiting for them to arrive at the Abbey, then suddenly everything felt rushed through once they did. Why did I need such detail on the fashions and schedules of vacation in Bath, but we skimmed straight through the end of the book?

A matter of taste

Austen breaks the fourth wall frequently in this one. I know some readers find it clever and entertaining, but it just broke me out of the story and annoyed me. She’s literally telling her readers things instead of just showing the story. I think commenting on her heroine and the conventions of novels and story-telling is what most readers find so amusing and entertaining about this book. It just rubbed me the wrong way and felt forced and pushy.

This is one of my best friend’s favorite Austen books, and I know she loves the story of the immature country girl learning to grow up and understand reality, recognize the difference between books and the real world and people around her, etc. To each their own. This book just really wasn’t for me.