Northanger Abbey: The Actual or the Sublime? Sierra-Lynn Krohnemann College

For hundreds of years, women were among the many in the world that held little to no rights. Subordinate to their husbands, they were legally not allowed to own property, or even voice their opinions in the community. Clearly, this needed to change. In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen explores the issues of women’s rights during the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century. While defending the novel throughout Northanger, Austen criticizes society at the time and the unjust treatment of women by critiquing the most popular genre; the gothic novel.

When Austin wrote Northanger, novels were seen as the lowest form of literature. Only women were seen reading novels while men spent their time on other forms of literature such as poetry or historical readings. Austen writes, “I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers,” to begin to explain the negative connotation that goes with being an author of a novel (22). She continues on to state, “From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers” (22). Austen realizes the hatred that goes with the novel and she does not want to feel as if her work is less than any man simply because it is classified as a novel. In ...