Looking down at her body, and the pool of blood she lay in, I laughed to myself. It was almost obscene, in a way, that we would end up here. I ran my hand through her dark hair, felt it slick with something that wasn’t water. The knife sat on the ground, by my foot. But then again, all flowers fade and die; daisies rot and wither like any other.

It was a summer, then, when we first met, and the warm wind danced through the grass. Spring’s flowers no longer held themselves tall; but the daisies stood firm and straight. And there she was.

It was a ball; a summer ball at the university, and there was singing inside the hall. Someone was shouting, a few too many beers in, and I was standing outside, away from it all. After all, they weren’t like me. The only voices they heard were each others’.

And there she was; a smile on her lips and my hand in hers. Telling me everything would be alright. My dear, my love, my flower.

And soon, she’ll be pushing up daisies.

Our extract (pg 114-115) was a conversation between Henry Tilney and Catherine, about their upcoming visit to Northanger Abbey. Catherine’s pretty much going on about how she thinks Northanger Abbey is going to be exactly like all all the abbeys she’s read in her gothic fiction novels. Henry just pretends to go along with it, in a mocking manner. He exaggerates about all the horrifying elements of his home like secret passages, dim-lighted hallways, creepy furniture and creepy servants. It turns out there are actually a lot of intertextual references to The Mysteries of Udolpho, in what Henry was saying. Catherine doesn’t really seem to pick up on the fact that Henry is making fun of her rampant imagination. Which is strange because she’s read The Mysteries of Udolpho and doesn’t seem to realise that he’s just stating things from that book. She even keeps telling Henry to continue about the house, until he can’t because he’s just laughing too much. This is how Northanger Abbey can be viewed as a satire based novel, it just pokes fun at lots of tropes that are considered classic gothic fiction.

I found a book that compares Northanger Abbey and other real gothic novels (it is called Corpus Linguistics in Literary Analysis: Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries). And they compare every gothic scene in Northanger Abbey to other genuine gothic novels like Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk. I decided to focus on the motif of a candle being blown out because it is so typical and I personally have seen it countless times in modern terror and no doubt it happens in the classics as well just as often as it happens today. It is also a clear motif in my passage.

For example in ‘The Turn of the Screw’ (gothic ghost story) a governess walks into a room and the candle suddenly goes out. This novel was published after Northanger Abbey, but we can still see the classic cliche being used seriously.

In Mysteries of Udolpho it also has a similar scene however it is not quite the same. The main character, Emily, considers getting herself a candle make her feel safer but she is too scared to leave her room to do so.

This is not specifically part of my passage however I thought it was so cool that I made this connection. In Northanger Abbey, the housekeeper tells Catherine that a cousin of the family died in the room Catherine in staying in. When I read this I immediately made the connection to last year when we were reading the infamous (to our grade) novel by Susan Hill, “I’m the King of the Castle”. I just remembered the moment when Hooper tells Kingshaw his grandfather died in the room where Kingshaw is sleeping. And guess what: IT IS A GOTHIC NOVEL. I was literally so excited when I was able to find a clear gothic motifs in other gothic works I have studied other than the gothic pieces we looked at this year.

Northanger Abbey being of satirical nature, it is normal that there is an inspiration from the general Gothic Style. Northanger Abbey is a Burlesque of other Gothic fictions such as Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

In this particular extract, Catherine is simply examining her own room, but the writing style manages to create a kind of suspense which usually only is found with Gothic Fiction ,such as with “The window curtains seemed in motion. It could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the divisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly humming a tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageously behind each curtain, saw nothing on either low window seat to scare her” When we read this, on first sight, it looks like Catherine is in a dangerous situation. But when we take this into context, she is just afraid of her own room, as she herself thinks she is in a Gothic setting, and wants to be a Gothic heroine. However, there also is the help from the use of the words. For example, the way Catherine  is described as ‘peeping’ behind the curtains, and reassuring herself that there is no one to scare her, really show that nothing really is happening. Austen used the window’s curtains and the wind in order to create a ‘Gothic Suspense’, we could say.

To truly understand how much Northanger Abbey is a parody of Gothic Fiction, it can be good to compare it to ACTUAL Gothic Fiction. In Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights the protagonist is in a much more intimidating situation, demonstrated by “I heard distinctively the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow” “The hook was soldered into the staple: a circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten. I must stop it nevertheless.” “The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed , “Let me in – Let me in!”” Those are all around the same lines (so same context throughout). Compared to with Northanger Abbey, the vocabulary used is a lot more sinister: “hook”, “horror”, “nightmare”, “clung”, “melancholy”… The specific use of the words make the event seem truly strange and worthy to be afraid of, like what actually is happening, with the protagonist hearing this voice who wants to enter inside the room. Like with Northanger Abbey, there is ‘Gothic Suspense’ built, but since this is a serious Gothic Fiction,  Bronte has used very specific words which fit well into the events of this extract.

And yet, as different as they seem to be, both for example feature the use of wind to build suspense, and both have the protagonist afraid of what COULD happen in the room they are. In order to make Northanger Abbey a satirical version of Gothic Fiction, Jane Austen made fun of the climax parts of  chapters of Gothic fictions, in which not only is suspense being built, but SOMETHING happens. She did so by taking those Gothic elements, and instead of using them normally, putting vocabulary which has a more lightly toned connotation, and putting all events in Catherine’s imagination, since all she wants is to BE a Gothic Heroine, and make nothing actually happen. This is a way for Austen to poke at Gothic Fictions in which there always a very large buildup to something using all those different elements SUCH AS the wind. Jane Austen depicts Northanger Abbey’s GOTHIC part as just being in Catherine’s head.

NorthANGER Abbey

This meme (Bad Pun Dog) really lives up to its name… And it does not make sense either…

Jane Austen uses the burlesque style in pages 118-119 to mock Catherine’s increasing paranoia. She reveals her immense curiosity when she says ” I will look into it- cost me what is may.” Catherine takes the chest very seriously and believes it is “secured by supernatural means.” We also notice that “her eyes were still bent on the object” which highlights the accumulation of her thoughts. However, when she finds out it is a bedspread folded up inside, she gives “the first blush of surprise.” Austen uses this comic style to mock Catherine and her paranoia.

I compared this with The Pirates of the Caribbean, in which the characters are fighting over a chest which contains a beating heart. This heart is supernatural and would allow them to control the seven sees. Drama accumulates when one of the characters seizes the chest. However, when he opens it he realizes that the heart was taken away by some other character. In this movie, drama is used sufficiently to keep the audience interested enough, but does not mock it as Austen does.

Alright, basically the piece of text the Ahana and I received consists of a conversation between Mr.Tinley and Catherine, in which the topic of discussion between the two is Catherine living in a new place of residence. The discussion was mainly about how Catherine was going to experience these gothic settings and scenarios, once she moves into her new home at an attempt to poke fun at well established, generic gothic novels with  intertextuality mainly with the Castle Of Udolpho, which is one of the main influences upon this book in general as well as the conversation going on between Catherine and Mr.Tinley.

For example, Mr.Tinley made stated that Catherine would end up having the ” apartment never used since some cousin or kin died in it about 20 years before”. This is a direct reference to Isabella in the castle of Udolpho who also was confined in a room which used to belong to a deceased person.

Another similarity would also be the mention of  “Dorothy the ancient housekeeper”. Dorothy was also the name of the housekeeper in the chataeu- le- blanc where Emily spends much of the final third of Udolpho.

A third similarity would be Tinleys mention of how she would find a “a division in the tapestry so artfully constructed as to defy the minutest inspection and on opening it, a door will immediately appear and with your lamp in your hand , will pass through into a small vaulted room”. This is a direct reference to how Isabella in Udolpho finds a small door which leads to a vaulted room which she uses in order to escape from Manfred ( the guy chasing her)