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Summary: Pure Entertainment!
Review: It's a wonderfully delightful book. It's the funniest of all her novels! The most youthful and light-hearted book by Austen.
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Summary: A very interesting read .
Review: I thought that Northanger Abbey was a capturing read and yet, if you have not read any of her other novels you would find the language hard to grasp at first. I think that she describes Catherine Moreland's naivity very well and there is a very pleasing ending.
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Summary: Book Report and Criticism by Carmen Woode - Grade 12
Review: Northanger Abbey is a classic (time) about a seventeen year old girl who is invited to spend a period of time with some friends, Mr and Mrs Allen in Bath. While in Bath, Catherine meets the Tilneys (the General, Henry, and Isabella). Catherine is invited to go to Northanger Abbey, the title of the novel to spend some time with the Tilneys. While in Northanger Abbey, Catherine imagines some gruesome secrets surrounding the General, his wife and his house. The secrets are somehow revealed to the General who has Catherine ordered out of the house. Catherine returns to her home (her father, mother, and siblings) an altered person. Henry arrives at her house (he has evidently followed her) and asks for her hand in marriage. Catherine consents, and later the General gives his blessing on the marriage of his son and Catherine Morland. I did not like this book. Jane Austen satirizes the Gothic novels of her time. In order to truly understand "Northanger Abbey", I feel that you need an understanding of the Gothic novels of the Victorian era of literature. Despite this being a time classic, I felt that it was amazing that this book has withstood the test of time. I can not relate to Catherine, and the activities in which she engages. However, if you want to read a classic, Northanger Abbey is a good choice, as it teaches about the life of an upper class girl in Victorian society.
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Summary: A great Jane Austen satire of the gothic novels.
Review: If you've read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, or any of the Victorian gothic novels and thought that the authors overdid it a bit, you'll love this. Jane Austen makes fun of every popular gothic novel of the time. The heroine not only had a pitifully inconsequential childhood, but couldn't seem to find any dark secrets or mystical adventures.
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Summary: A GOOD BOOK
Review: I realy enjoyed Northanger Abbey, it's a lighthearted and fun book that does'nt drag along for too long and after reading it you feel satisfied. i thought the use of humour in it was great and really liked all the characters. i throughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to everyone!!.
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Summary: Northanger Abbey is not great, but good
Review: It isn't a wonderful book, it isn't a great book, but it's a pretty good book and a nice read. Catherine Morland is a great character, and the plot is light hearted and fun. Some of the scenes are really funny, and it's a good light read. On the other hand, the whole thing has had an air of "rich people without problems amusing themselves", which is annoying, and parts of the book are dry. If you want a good book to waste away an afternoon, choose this. If you want a great classic, go elsewhere.
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Summary: Modern Readers get a through the looking glass feeling
Review: Years after taking literature classes that basically destroyed some of the world best books by disecting them to death, I decided to read some of the 'classics' simply as entertainment. Austen was on the top of my list. After reading Northanger Abbey, I think I'll eventually go thorough all of her works. Why? Well, it's like reading about an alien race and their customs and habits. I realize the society that she writes about was her own and not that long ago ... yet, it's so foreign when compared to today's society. It's like being plopped down in a foreign land and expected to relate to the natives -- and yet the characters are so vibrant that you find yourself drawn in. Catherine Morland is every person who takes people at face value -- if they are recommended as nice, kind, and entertaining people then they must be. In her sheltered life, that attitude has always worked. But on her first trip to Bath, Catherine has to learn to listen to her own heart, observe what others do and form her own opinions. Sounds simple but in that society, women weren't exactly encouraged to think for themselves. Catherine's active imagination, fueled by all the novels she has read, color her perceptions. She learns to recognize the difference between fantasy and reality but maintains her sense of humor. Delightful, insightful, and fun to read.
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Summary: Good book
Review: If you become interesting in this book, please read it before seeing the movie. The movie is disapionting due to liberties taken. This book is darker than other Jane Austen classics, but still worth a look. Austen gives the romance that I always crave with a mysterious edge that is new, but understanding due to what was popular at the time. One of my favorites.
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Summary: Shrewd and witty
Review: Jane Austen just knocks me out. She wrote in a living room full of extended family,she wrote longhand when paper was not so plentiful as it is today and mistakes could not be so frequently wadded up and tossed to the landfill, she wrote without the instant editing afforded by personal computers, she wrote without benefit of the MFA programs and workshops we are assured today are the only route to producing literary art, and yet she wrote beautifully and for all time. Every word counts, every character is real, every scene pulses along in a swift current. Her work can be many things at once: social satire, romance, social criticism, a comedy of manners. It is a portrait of a certain society in a certain time, it is a universal commentary on human foibles, gender relations, class and money.
NORTHANGER ABBEY was one of Austen's earliest mature works, and it stands alongside PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and the rest. She does something different in this one: she uses her own novel to, among other things, satirize the popular literature of her time, especially Ann Radcliffe's MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO. She sets out telling us that her protagonist, Catherine Morland, is not your typical heroine, that in fact she's ordinary without special talents, a dramatic home life or heart-stopping beauty. She belongs to the audience that was vacuuming up the burgeoning genre of popular literature of her time, and the second half of the story largely finds her attempting to live like a heroine in her favorite gothic romance, only to have reality jump out of the closet at her at every turn. The first half of the story is the set up for the second, the comedy of manners that positions her in the company of the residents of Northanger Abbey, whose name conjures up in her mind a dramatic ruin of a castle. There is, in fact, quite a bit of suspense that keeps you up late, just not the kind Catherine has in mind. If you pay attention in the first half of the book, you will find the "guns" neatly planted that go off in the last act.
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Summary: Doing It Gothic Style
Review: Doing It Gothic Style
NORTHANGER ABBEY
By: Jane Austen/Random House, Inc.
Catherine Morland was a young seventeen year old girl, growing up in a small village where she had about nine brothers and sisters, other than herself. Her mother was an ordinary woman who sometimes had too much to do, while her father was a clergyman. Just for the season, Catherine was invited by Mr. and Mrs. Allen to come with them to a town called Bath. At first, Mrs. Allen and Catherine are disappointed by the lack of acquaintances, even though they walk the town all day and go to the upper room and the lower rooms. Mrs. Allen had a sense for fashion and always had a beautiful dress on. Soon enough Catherine was introduced to Henry Tilney. However, as she started to develop a crush on him and looked forward to their meetings, he did not come around for a while. By a sudden twist of fate, she meets the Thorpe's. A family whom her brother knows because he had befriended their son and stayed with them for a summer .She quickly became friends with the eldest daughter, Isabella Thorpe. She had a grace and way about her that Catherine admired very much. She is the one who encourages Catherine's interest in romantic fantasies and gothic reading. Isabella also starts a love triangle between herself and James Morland, Catherine, John and Henry. For the first half it is nothing but parties and friendship. It is not until the second half of the book that Catherine is invited to the Tilney's house in Northanger Abbey, where she gets caught up in her own imagination and believes that in that house there has been a murder and the murderer still lives there. Just like in the gothic novels she had been reading. Unfortunately, she was kicked out by General Tilney himself later on.
In the end, the book was about a girl who was naïve, awkward and shy yet she had kindness in her heart and sometimes got lost in her own world sometimes seeing things that were not true. With all the books she read and believed in, her imagination would tend to catch up to her.
Overall, this book was a three star because even though the story was a little plane at the beginning, it improved later on. It was a good read if you are into a corky story or like the old books written in the late eighteen hundreds or beginning nineteen hundreds. I would not however, recommend it to anyone seeking adventure.
By: Christina Menendez
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