Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey Comic by Nancy Butler

Feeding into that, the importance of reading as means of enlightenment and escape is emphasised. Language is important, with the archaic formality both amusing and satirising how dull society could be to anyone of more than limited intelligence. In the salons she meets two men, different in temperament, preferring the more flattering Tilney to the single-minded John Thorpe, whose conversation invariably drifts back to horses.

There is a subtlety, however, because even the female cast members have their pretentious and manipulative qualities, and that’s not as obviously accentuated.Ĭatherine fantasises about being a romantic heroine, and her first steps toward this ideal are taken when she accompanies Mrs Allen from her village to the glamour of Bath for the summer. She has plenty of experience, having her own back catalogue of gothic romance novels. Austen also accentuates the smug and patronising attitude of Henry Tilney, not just toward Catherine, but other women also as part of a pomposity pricking exercise that Nancy Butler brings through well. To some extent it’s a parody of late eighteenth century romantic fiction, deliberately drawing attention to how it differs, primarily via its heroine Catherine Moreland, described as knowing nothing at seventeen, and a relatively ordinary looking woman rather than a beauty with smouldering passions. It was eventually published posthumously. Northanger Abbey would under other circumstances have been Jane Austen’s first published novel, yet for reasons now lost in time, the printer to whom it was sold sat on it for ten years as her fame grew, never committing it to print.

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey Comic by Nancy Butler