Northanger Abbey: Jane Austen’s Connexion with Ann Radcliffe and the Gothic

Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen each wrote a "gothic" novel near the end of the 18 th century.The Mysteries of Udolpho was published in 1794 and Northanger Abbey, written beginning in the 1790s, was published after Austen's death in 1818.Each novel tells the tale of an isolated young woman at the mercy of a domineering older male figure in a grand and frightening mansion.Each young heroine faces her fears, finds the most egregious of them to be groundless, and marries the young man of her choice.Northanger makes several direct references to Udolpho, 1 and the connection between the two novels has been noted by authors treating the gothic genre (e.g., Skinner, 2013; Wallace, 1988).Udolpho was an extremely successful novel and it was widely read in its day (Howard, 2001); Northanger continues to be widely read today as a part of the Austen opus.According to the Google Ngram Viewer®, which searches millions of books for the occurrence of words, phrases, or titles, The Mysteries of Udolpho is mentioned more frequently in publications issued between the novel's first appearance in 1794 and 1872, while Northanger Abbey is mentioned more frequently from 1887 onwards. 2 It is frequently suggested that Udolpho is a gothic masterpiece while Northanger is a parody of the genre (e.g., Lenckos, 2010; Rehn, 2014).Parody involves the comic retelling and transformation of a text in a manner designed to promote critical thinking, both about the parodied text and about the parody itself (Hannoosh, 1989).Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia (1987, p. 738) defines parody as "a comic or satirical imitation of a piece of writing, exaggerating its style and content, and playing especially on any weakness in the structure or meaning of the original."Word® and Google® offer "mockery" as a synonym of "parody."Was mockery Austen's main aim in writing Northanger Abbey?Freeman (1963) suggests that parody might focus on ridiculing a well-known work, or that it might instead take a "positive and constructive" approach that creates new meaning by reading an existing work in a creative manner (p.307).Gothic romances deal with emotional settings and emotional conflicts (isolated maidens, grand vistas, forbidding castles, ghosts), often dwelling on them to an extreme degree.If Udolpho is a gothic masterpiece, and Northanger is a parody of the 1 There are a total of 18 references to Udolpho in Northanger, mainly in conversations held between Catherine Moreland and Isabella Thorpe, Catherine and John Thorpe, and Catherine and Henry Tilney.

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