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The Importance Of Romanticism In Northanger Abbey

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Northanger Abbey was the first completed novel by Jane Austen, one of the most famous novelists of the early 19th century and British novelists in general. Austen is known for her social commentary, as well as romance, for which some of her works like Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility are popular even today. Northanger Abbey is a novel famous for its satirizing of the Gothic novel, simultaneously criticizing the values of people (stressing the importance of education for women) and illustrating the life of the British gentry, placing the spotlight over a young woman and her adapting to the real world surrounding her. Therefore, it is hard to place this novel into only one specific genre, just like it is hard to identify Austen with a particular literary movement as romanticism or Victorian literature. …show more content…

However, in the previous years, the interest for the Gothic has been much higher. Many writers produced novels filled with horror, death and sometimes romance, which had a substantial success and sparked general interest among the reading audiences. Austen, unlike many other writers of the time, did not show interest in such subjects. Just the opposite, she was not fond of the absurdities and excesses of the Gothic. She used her novels to comment on the society, values in life and importance of education, as well as to point out the irony of life. Although her works are most noticeable because of the critique of the times, she is often remembered for the romances she depicts in her novels. Her usual protagonists are young women, only entering adult world, trying to find their position in the society. Such is the case in Northanger Abbey, where Catherine, turning 17, starts to experience the real life and troubles of an unmarried woman among the landed

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