After reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, I believe that the novel is more likely to encourage its audience to read Gothic fiction rather than discouraging them from doing so. By having a main heroine who enjoys reading Gothic fiction along with how often it comes up in the storyline Austen, even if she didn’t intend to do so, is influencing her readers to take part in the action and see what they’re missing out on.
Having a heroine as a person who actively enjoys Gothic fiction, or just reading in general will affect the readers by influencing them to do the same. Seeing, or in this case reading about someone, who is designed to be likeable, do an activity can make people desire to do the same thing and be like the person they admire. This can be seen throughout popular culture for as long as you can look back. Famous celebrities will start trends by wearing a clothing item and then all of the sudden everyone and their mother is sporting that look. This can be seen with Kim Kardashian’s biker shorts and even Farrah Fawcett’s hairstyle. An example of a trend that also came from a book is the “okay? okay” phenomenon that took the world by storm in late 2013 early 2014 after John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars grew in fame and found its way onto the bookshelves of girls ranging from seventh to twelfth grade. I don’t think that I saw one binder or instagram post that didn’t adorn the phrase at that time. People have a desire to be like those they admire therefore, by having Cathrine, both a heroine and an avid reader of Gothic fiction in Northanger Abbey readers are influenced to do the same.
Despite one of the characters saying that, “novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff,” or the fact that Northanger Abbey is considered as more of a mockery of Gothic fiction, the amount of times it’s novels are mentioned in the book is enough publicity for the genre (page 40). An instance where the genre comes up in the book are when Catherine admits to Isabella “reading (The Mysteries of Udolpho) ever since (she) woke” and then the pair come up with a list of other Gothic novels they can read once she is done with Udolpho in Volume I, Chapter V. Another time (out of the many) occurs later on in Volume II, Chapter II when Catherine is invited to go to the Tilney’s home, Northanger Abbey and she gets excited not only about being with the Tilneys, but also because this will be her first time seeing an abbey like the ones she reads about in her Gothic novels. Having this repetition throughout the novel about doing a certain thing, like reading a certain genre gets the idea into people’s heads. It makes them think that everyone knows about and has read it before, and if they haven’t done so they can feel left out and desire to look into and read some of what they’re missing out on.
Northanger Abbey might have been written to mock the Gothic fiction genre. However, due to the fact that it has a heroine who enjoys reading Gothic fiction along with how often it comes up in the storyline, I believe that the novel is more likely to encourage its audience to read Gothic fiction rather than discouraging them from doing so.
Jen Carter
Brit Lit 2020 