Contrary to my expectations, I enjoyed Northanger Abbey abbey quite a bit, becoming strangely compelled by the story, and its characters. I think part of what I was so enamoured by was the fact that Jane Austen was able to make so much out of so little, and out of such ‘traditional’ characters. Even though the motivations of marriage, reputation, and so forth seem archaic to me, and maybe were even a bit dull to readers in Austen’s time, she is able to convey the thoughts and personalities of characters with dizzying depth and complexity. Her writing was intimate enough that even the journey of such a seemingly dainty, foreign psyche as Catherine’s appeared as a jarring emotional roller coaster even to me. I guess what I’m getting at is Northanger Abbey demonstrates that exceptional writing can make something even as foreign to us as Regency era England transcend its own context and feel vivid and high-stakes. Not to mention that the prose was exceptionally easy to read and get through. The writing style Austen adopts may exemplify Wordsworth’s definition of bibliotherapy as writing that is the non-savage, accurate transfer of meaning and emotions through words and thoughts heavily meditated on.
