In order to understand how Austen satirises Gothic fiction it is necessary to understand what is meant by the term Gothic and why Austen is seemingly attacking this genre.

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        Northanger Abbey is generally perceived to be a Neo-classical parody of Gothic fiction. In order to understand how Austen satirises Gothic fiction it is necessary to understand what is meant by the term Gothic and why Austen is seemingly attacking this genre. The Gothic novel, it is said, came into existence with Walpole's Castle of Otranto although some trace it back to the supernatural events of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth. The term Gothic is taken from a highly decorative, and some would say excessive, form of Architecture. The central themes of Gothic novels are their excessiveness and their inexplicable and convoluted plot lines. They tend to be extremely formulaic with castles, chains, ghouls and the ever present heroine of questionable bloodlines. The Gothic Novel is also extreme with extremes of situation, language and feeling. This is in marked contrast with the Neo-classical mistrust of emotion.

         The Neo-classical age is also known as " The Age of Reason ". The Eighteenth Century saw many leaps forward in the fields of Medicine, Science and Industry. The whole era is characterised by its reason and judgement, its clearheaded pragmatism and a dislike of the superstition of the earlier periods. Those who embraced this new age felt they could achieve excellence in all fields by emulating the Classical age of the Greeks and the Romans. The Neo-classical writers were of course a reflection of this age. Not for them the excess and frivolity of the Gothic writers rather they promoted reason,balance and decorum. For many Neo-classical writers the extremes of emotion displayed in the Gothic Novel could in fact undermine society. The basis of society, they felt, must be moderation and rationality. This was the age into which Jane Austen was born and the atmosphere into which Northanger Abbey was introduced.

         Austen as a Neo-classical writer is aware of the perils of Gothic values and so sets out to attack them. The methods she uses are satire and irony. Straight away in Chapter One she attacks telling us that her Heroine, Catherine Morland, is very ordinary  and from an ordinary family. Her Father is " Not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters,"  a typical Gothic trait in a Father. We are introduced to Catherine's Mother as a " woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper." these are standard Neo-classical traits. Austen, sarcastically, tells us that " instead of dying ... as anyone might expect," she " lived to have six children more." A Gothic heroines mother would have died giving birth to her thus leaving her at the mercy of a cruel father or worse still an orphan. Not Catherine her life is as uneventful as she is ordinary and as normal as she is plain.

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        Catherine's entrance in to social life, a trip to Bath, is again no dazzling affair. Her family far from imploring her to beware of  " the violence of such Noblemen and Baronets as delight in forcing young ladies to some remote farmhouse." instead advise her to wrap up warmly. Austen again mocks the Gothic genre by contrasting the excess of emotion with the practicalities of everyday life. In a brilliant summing up of Neo-classical values we are told that all things relating to the journey were done "with a degree of moderation and composure, which seemed rather ...

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