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English literature
Character development introduction
Character development introduction
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Northanger Abbey was different from many of Austen’s other novels due to the increase of humor and irony seen in the narrative. One chapter that embodies this humor is chapter fourteen. Chapter fourteen shows Catherine’s naïve character and her infatuation with the gothic novel. This entire scene is laced with humor, but creates a discussion on novels between Henry and Catherine. To begin, Catherine remarks on the scenery and compares it to the South of France. Humorously, Henry believes she has traveled there, but in fact Catherine is only comparing the scenery to what she has read in novels. This begins the debate of men and women reading novels. Catherine states that Henry must not read novels, as she recalls a previous conversation with John Thorpe where he states that he never read books, especially not gothic novels. Catherine is quite surprised when Henry clarifies that he does read and has read all of Radcliffe’s novels. This is an interesting subject in Austen’s novels and in this chapter, it could be implied that novels are meant to be read, and gender roles do not apply when reading novels. However, throughout the novel, Austen makes a point with Catherine that novels are to be read as entertainment, but one should never “lose” themselves in a novel. Another concept seen in this chapter is the discussion of different types of literature. While Catherine only reads gothic novels, Henry argues that there are also valuable types of literature, particularly history. Catherine’s opinion of history books is a humorous one, as she says “to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls; and though I know it is all very right and necessary, I have often wondered at the person’s courage that could sit down on purp... ... middle of paper ... ...inues to explain how Catherine was only describing a new novel and her vivid imagination and description was construed by Eleanor as riots and terror in the streets of London. If anything could be said positive of Catherine’s character at this moment is that she is enthusiastic and she could be a very good storyteller. Chapter fourteen of Northanger Abbey has many good discussions on literature, and what makes it so valuable in the novel is Catherine’s character. If Catherine was not in the novel, the discussion of literature may come across as unnecessary, and without the humor Austen places these discussions in, the concepts and ideas of literature might come across as preachy and would not stand out as ideal concepts that later mold Catherine’s growth as a character. Works Cited Austen, Jane, and Marilyn Butler. Northanger Abbey. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.
The excerpt of “Chapter 1 from Northanger Abbey” by Jane Austen, introduces the reader to the protagonist of the novel, Catherine Morland. Born in the rural town of Fullerton in England, with a big family of modest income, Catherine is presented as an unremarkable, plain-looking child that was never interested enough to be proficient at whatsoever. Although all of her characteristics diverge from what an heroine profile should be, the author continually emphasizes that she would become one; this being the main topic. At the age of ten, Jane Asuten describes the girl’s demeanor as “noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house" (27). As she enters
Catherine has an extremely naive, novel-like view of love. “[Henry’s] name was not in the Pump-room book, and curiosity could do no more. He must be gone from Bath.yet he had not mentioned that his stay would be so short! This sort of mysteriousness, which is always so becoming in a hero, threw a fresh grace in Catherine's imagination around his persona and manners, and increased her anxiety to know more of him,” (34-35). She is obsessed with Henry’s “mysteriousness”, not so dissimilar to the heroines in her novels, who were all in love with tall, dark and mysterious men. Although her naivete and imagination almost get her in trouble with Henry when she thinks his father has killed his mother, her naive obsession with him is the only reason their relationship ever
Grey, J. David., A. Walton. Litz, B. C. Southam, and H. Abigail. Bok. The Jane Austen Companion. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Print.
Jane Austen seems to have been disheartened by the decay of England's aristocratic society. The exploration of the innocent protagonist of each novel further into her core ethics, and the relation of these to the imposing culture of her immediate family and surrounding social class gives the reader a fresh taste of the prominence of class distinction and the apparent emptiness of the aristocratic society that in reality existed in Austen's own life. A close examination of the evolution of Austen's ideals through her novels will reveal the essence of the protagonist's relationship to her family, and its direct relationship to the family's moral stance, as well as conclusive evidence regarding Austen's own values.
These themes include romance, spirituality, prejudice, hypocrisy, and many more, which are interspersed throughout the novel in a unique manner. Two critics that feel strongly about Austen’s novel are Julie Rattey, who discusses the spiritual aspects of the novel, and Linda Ruhemann, who discusses the reasons why young adults are so fascinated with the novel itself.
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen expresses the powerful narrative voice. The narrative voice that she uses is different from other novels. Most authors try to hide their presence in their novels but Jane Austen does not try to hide her presence. Her presence in the novel is so clear. For example, “The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of sister author, and her treatment of the subject I will only add” (Austen 81). She tries not to trick her reader as he/she reads the novel. Instead she informs the reader that the book itself is just a novel. Her purpose is not to convince the reader and correct her story, but to understand the imperfection of language because language does not always tell the truth or enough for the truth.
Despite being rampantly popular, the questionable plots of gothic novels is both satirized and parodied in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. However, while Austen mocks the gothic romance genre through Catherine’s intent fascination on its dark conditions, she simultaneously uses the setting of Northanger Abbey as a metaphor for the literal and realistic horrors underlying society. Initially introduced as naïve and trusting, Catherine’s time at Northanger Abbey is the setting of her bildungsroman and by the end of her stay one can consciously affirm her status as a heroine. Ironically, while Catherine is oblivious of the unscrupulous intentions of the Thorpes and General Tilney, she is hyperaware that the road within Northanger Abbey was “odd
Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a unique piece of literature that has earned the right to stand on its own. Through it, she strategically designed a new form of character within a new form of novel. She employs the use of her own experiences and tactically combines it with her novel characters, especially Catherine Morland, her clever narrative style and her distinctive use of gothic imagery to challenge her readers. She causes her readers to turn their judgments upon themselves, realizes that at some point in their lives, they have walked a mile in Catherine’s shoes.
Jane Austen writes about the society of her time, achievements, behaviors, values, prejudices, aspirations. She belongs to the middle class within the social class system in. The novel is set during the time of the regency, which is a bridge between the Georgian and Victorian period. The eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries from part of the perspective of the European history. At this time they were having a lot of changes in economic, political, social and cultural. “Austen herself notes that she knows little of the world at large and instead chooses to write about what she does know.”
In Northanger Abbey, Austen intended to reflect a contrast between a normal, healthy-natured girl and the romantic heroines of fiction thorough the use of characterization. By portraying the main character, Catherine Moorland, as a girl slightly affected with romantic notions, Jane Austen exhibits the co...
Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey as a satire and when the reader turns every page, it is clear that Jane Austen was making fun of the society she was living in. It’s the satire of the Gothic novel that was surrounding her at the time. What Northanger Abbey does so well in terms of satire is subvert the system of Western patriarchy by the gothic genre and questions the structure of women and nature. Like many of the tales in England of the heroine, Northanger Abbey tells the story of the daughter, who heroic acts are modesty and submission. This essay will focus on what gothic heroine meant at the time, while analyzing why Jane Austen was making fun of the meaning.
An Essay: On Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing
. The reader sees an extraordinary inwardness in Emily Bronte’s book Wuthering Heights. Emily has a gloomy and isolated childhood. . Says Charlotte Bronte, “ my sister’s disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favored and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church, or to take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home.”(Everit,24) That inwardness, that remarkable sense of the privacy of human experience, is clearly the essential vision of Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte saw the principal human conflict as one between the individual and the dark, questioning universe, a universe symbolized, in her novel, both by man’s threatening and hardly-to-be-controlled inner nature, and by nature in its more impersonal sense, the wild lonesome mystery of the moors. The love of Heathcliff and Catherine, in its purest form, expresses itself absolutely in its own terms. These terms may seem to a typical mind, violent, and even disgusting. But having been generated by that particular love, they are the proper expressions of it. The passionately private relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine makes no reference to any social convention or situation. Only when Cathy begins to be attracted to the well-mannered ways of Thrushcross Grange, she is led, through them, to abandon her true nature.
Throughout the novel Lady Catherine is a foil to Elizabeth to show Elizabeth’s best characteristics. Elizabeth is shown to be more independent and self-confident than prior when she confronts with Lady Catherine such as in Chapter 29, “Elizabeth’s courage did not fail her. She had heard nothing of Lady Catherine that spoke her awful from any extraordinary talents or miraculous virtue, and the mere stateliness of money and rank, she thought she could witness without trepidation” (pg. 158). The other role of Lady Catherine is her personality on the effects of society and class. One particular account of this is in chapter 29, “Lady Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us which becomes herself and her daughter. I could advise you merely to put on whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest—there is no occasion for anything more. Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved.” (pg. 158). This expresses the ideas that Jane Austen was trying set forth with Lady Catherine in the principles of what society and class had as an effect with the plot of Pride and Prejudice and the surrounding
The biographies about Jane Austen describe the facts of her life in a step-by-step manner. They tend to be repetitive since she did not leave behind a rich fabric of day-to-day life. Yet Jane Austen is known not because of the factual details of her life; she is not remembered two hundred years after her death because she had six siblings and was a wonderful aunt to her nieces and nephews. Rather, Jane Austen is remembered because of what she wrote, her "ouvre." Only through reading her literature does one get a taste of the real Jane Austen, the Jane Austen who dreamed and made plans for the future that failed to materialize. Therefore, I have attempted to describe the life of Jane Austen by interpreting her novels and picking three main characters who I feel most closely serve as her alter ego. A writer writes from his or her own experiences; only by analyzing Jane Austen's characters do we get an understanding of the true author.