Narrative Techniques In Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, is a bildungsroman, a coming of age story that focuses on the psychological and maturity of the protagonist Catherine Morland, and her development from youth to adulthood. This essay will analyse the language, and narrative techniques of the set extract, and discuss how this important passage suggests change in Catherine’s role as Austen’s female bildungsroman. In addition, it will aim to decipher how linguistic presentations can have a profound effect, on a young imagination, and how reality can sometimes be misinterpreted with fiction and impede on the perception of moral and social relationships. Finally, it will conclude by briefly discussing the significance of the passage within the novel’s wider themes.

She likes reading, predominantly gothic fiction of the time such as, The mysteries of Udulpho, by Ann Radcliffe. Consequently, the immature Catherine becomes absorbed by the events that occur in this fiction, which fuel her fertile imagination. Subsequently, Catherine finds it difficult to differentiate between the fictitious gothic world and real life-reality. Therefore, her ingenuousness disposition disrupts her power to reason, and she often misunderstands situations, confuses real friendships, and fails to recognise manipulative scheming people and true

The General is a calculating, and a domineering bully, whose cold capricious overbearing manner, dominates his children. The General creates palpable tension, which is reflected on his children who are fearful of speaking up against him. The general is governed by greed, he is hostile and false, and stages a front to impress Catherine, who he mistakenly believes is an heiress. In contrast Catherine, who has a hyperactive imagination, believes that the General has murdered his wife, and she has paranoid assumptions that everything the General does, relates to his guilty