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saguaros 's review for:
Northanger Abbey
by Jane Austen
But you gave Pride & Prejudice 4.5 stars!!! I hear you say. Yes. Yes, I did. And I’m giving Northanger Abbey 5. P&P is objectively the better crafted book. A real masterpiece. But I had SO MUCH FUN reading Northanger Abbey. Truly a black horse of the Austen canon. Catherine Morland an underrated heroine. I could write so much about it (I won’t, I don’t like writing essays). But I will say: it is actually really funny. As a friend of mine who knows more about these things than me told me, NA is Austen’s most meta book. It’s a love letter and satire and I think you have to know at least a little bit about classic gothic literature to really appreciate it. It references a lot of stuff. It’s often tongue in cheek. Austen literally stops the narrative in its track to address her contemporaries and let them know she thinks it’s dumb that they write novels about characters that are looked down on for reading novels. I can’t count how many times I laughed out loud. Or went to google to check something. I feel like I learned a lot about that time period reading this.
The weakest part of the book is probably the romance and I could see how that would put a damper on people’s experience of it if they expect more of that. Henry Tilney is no Fitzwilliam Darcy (though lbr Mr Darcy is a real DICK for like, half of the novel). He can easily come off as patronizing (though I think a good faith reading of him is that he likes to tease and banter but Catherine has no wit in her to banter back so it falls flat and a little mean at time. Also he’s sometime just literally patronizing). Also the age gap is more felt, exacerbated by Catherine’s inexperience. But the love story in NA really just isn’t a big part of the plot at all.
IMO, Catherine Morland would be a more beloved heroine if society didn’t dislike teenage girls and their passions so much. I have so many thoughts about her I COULD write an essay but won’t (see above). The book really felt like a coming of age story to me. Catherine, 17 years old, leaving her country house and town for the first time having only known mostly kindness and support and entering her season in Bath with absolutely no tool in her head or in her personality to deal with the potential wickedness and trickery of others. Or the pitfalls of her own imagination. She is accidentally HILARIOUS. I have never in my life been so on edge about whether or not a country walk would happen. When Catherine learns that the Tilneys live in an Abbey (the titular one obviously) her gothic-obsessed mind is like I HOPE IT’S OLD AND DECREPIT HEARTEYES EMOJI. If she lived today, she would leave scathing instagram comments on DIYers videos for daring to paint wood and would potentially speculate on true crime (HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THAT HE COULD HAVE HIDDEN HIS WIFE IN THE ATTIC). She is a queen, an icon.
I didn’t think I could hate an Austen character more than Mr Collins, but John Thorpe (and to an only slightly lesser extant his sister Isabella) proved me wrong.
ANYWAY, I have never highlighted an ebook so much, it was practically annotated. I LOVED IT A LOT.
The weakest part of the book is probably the romance and I could see how that would put a damper on people’s experience of it if they expect more of that. Henry Tilney is no Fitzwilliam Darcy (though lbr Mr Darcy is a real DICK for like, half of the novel). He can easily come off as patronizing (though I think a good faith reading of him is that he likes to tease and banter but Catherine has no wit in her to banter back so it falls flat and a little mean at time. Also he’s sometime just literally patronizing). Also the age gap is more felt, exacerbated by Catherine’s inexperience. But the love story in NA really just isn’t a big part of the plot at all.
IMO, Catherine Morland would be a more beloved heroine if society didn’t dislike teenage girls and their passions so much. I have so many thoughts about her I COULD write an essay but won’t (see above). The book really felt like a coming of age story to me. Catherine, 17 years old, leaving her country house and town for the first time having only known mostly kindness and support and entering her season in Bath with absolutely no tool in her head or in her personality to deal with the potential wickedness and trickery of others. Or the pitfalls of her own imagination. She is accidentally HILARIOUS. I have never in my life been so on edge about whether or not a country walk would happen. When Catherine learns that the Tilneys live in an Abbey (the titular one obviously) her gothic-obsessed mind is like I HOPE IT’S OLD AND DECREPIT HEARTEYES EMOJI. If she lived today, she would leave scathing instagram comments on DIYers videos for daring to paint wood and would potentially speculate on true crime (HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THAT HE COULD HAVE HIDDEN HIS WIFE IN THE ATTIC). She is a queen, an icon.
I didn’t think I could hate an Austen character more than Mr Collins, but John Thorpe (and to an only slightly lesser extant his sister Isabella) proved me wrong.
ANYWAY, I have never highlighted an ebook so much, it was practically annotated. I LOVED IT A LOT.