Analysis__Northanger_Abbey

05/12/06 English Northanger Abbey Marisa Jane Austen uses a lot of parodies in her books, like this one, a typical love story that consists of a man meeting a woman and they fall in love and normally during the relationship they will have problems, but of course in the end they work it out and they're happy. A parody is a piece of writing that makes the style similar to be amusing, “Northanger Abbey is a typical parody written by Jane Austen of a romantic fiction of that period, she parodies also the book called “Udolpho” which is mentioned in the novel. Her writing is very predictable for the readers, another example is “Pride&Prejudice”. Austen is clearly coping a typical love story which consists of a man making the first on a young lady which soon leads to the young girl falling in love with the man awaiting for a marriage, then of course there are the downsides such as arguments about the smallest of things or other arguments such as saying the wrong things at the wrong times to the wrong people, just the smallest of things. But then in the end, the puzzle is fixed again and the problems are solved. All ends up to be a happy ending. The woman in those typical love stories is totally different from the ordinary and plane Catherine. Austen really wanted to change the story, but at the same time using the background of a parody of a romantic fiction. Catherine has a sense of originality in her and she didn't start out being a beautiful girl that everyone liked. Unlike a heroine in the romantic fiction, she was born beautiful and will always be beautiful. The characteristics of a romantic heroine is also very different. Catherine was an ordinary child when she was in her twelve and as she reached the age of seventeen she started reading about romantic heroines, only after that she started to become interested in the things young women would like such as going to balls, dressing up for the balls and to meet new men, that would be in reality, the heroine in the romantic fiction would be prepared and would not have to look good, because she already does and she will remain popular with the men as well as her friends. What Jane Austen is trying to do is to try not to make everything so cliché, with the perfect people, the perfect places in perfect situations. She describes the abbey in the same way. In real life a typical abbey would be old fashioned designing and it would look almost like a ruin, but then of course back in the time of Austen, everything was newer and she described the abbey in the novel to be the newest of them all. With modern decorations and nothing mysterious. For example, the scene of when Catherine finds a piece of paper where she thinks there is something secret written on it when in fact it is just a washing list that was tucked away somewhere. To Jane Austen, a novel is about simple human life, she did not want to make it exactly like a typical romantic novel, because otherwise no one would be interested in reading it, she wanted to create something a bit different in it to catch the reader's attention. She only used the romantic fiction as a background to start it off. Unlike the other novels she wrote such as “ Pride&Prejudice” and “ Emma” , where almost everything is as you expected and the same thing happens. ( Man meets a young lady at a ball and they end up falling in love with each other.) “Northanger Abbey” has at least a few twists throughout the novel and that would make it interesting, because that is not what you would expect.