"Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind, is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can."
Hahah, I love Jane Austen so much, especially her sense of humor. Northanger Abbey is the last book I read and I was really surprised when I realized that it is completely unlike any other Jane Austen work. Northanger Abbey has a more juvenile feel to it, but not necessarily in a bad way. The heroine, Catherine Morland is naive, immature, and as the opening sentence points out, not quite a heroine. The book follows Catherine as she progresses from a child to a woman and in that, is very interesting. I really enjoyed seeing things through the eyes of a teenage girl who had never left home before. That's one thing that Jane Austen is good at. She's also good at writing epic romances. Northanger Abbey is not one of them. It's often referred to as "Jane Austen's soap opera." It's full of lying, manipulation, heartache, vilifying, attraction, and disappointment, among other things.
The main point of the book isn't the romance between Catherine and Henry Tilney, but the commentary on the hypocrisy of society at the time. That being said, I really loved it. Obviously it's no Pride and Prejudice, but it's kind of unfair to compare the two because they are so essentially different. The romance in Northanger Abbey takes a backseat to Austen's personal conclusions. Another thing I love about this book is that it's more crudely written than other Jane Austen novels. She gets right to the point when she needs to, without any sort of "decorating" the sentences. She's quite blunt and sarcastic in this book and I couldn't have enjoyed it more. I definitely recommend it if you're looking for a good, easy summer read and a couple of good laughs.
Image via Barnes & Noble
1 comment:
I got through half of it before I had to go back to school, but I watched the movie for extra credit and LOVE IT!
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