Apart from Mrs. Allen and Henry Tilney, there are three other negative protagonists: Isabella Thorpe, John Thorpe, and General Tilney. Although there are flaws in their personalities, they are never those Gothic villains who are extremely sinister or treacherous. Isabella was beautiful but a selfish and pitiful young lady who always wanted to marry a rich man. Like his sister, John Thorpe was merely a vulgar and imprudent young man and was always trying to be handsome and gentle. The only bad thing he has done to Catherine was telling General Tilney that Catherine was not at all rich so that the General angrily pushed Catherine out of Northanger Abbey. General Tilney was a money-driven man with a very strict sense of family status and wanted all his children to marry rich families. These three negative characters were never set up, or threatened, or tried to murder Catherine, they were quite unlike those vicious villains in Gothic novels.
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B. A. Thesis of Shandong University of Finance and Economics
Chapter Three Catherine’s Adventures
We have discussed the differences of plot construction and characterization between Northanger Abbey and Gothic novels in the preceding chapter. In the last chapter, we are going to take a closer look at the heroine‘s adventures in Northanger Abbey, the estate of the Tilneys‘, which is the climax of the novel and through which Jane Austen shows us the absurdness of Gothic novels and the significance of real life. I. On the Way to Northanger Abbey
During their journey to Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney deliberately makes fun of Catherine‘s innocent belief in Gothic novels, and says to her: ―[a]nd are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such as ?what one reads about‘ may produce? – Have you a stout heart? – Nerves fit for sliding panels and tapestry?‖ (178; ch.20). Henry also jokingly describes some horrible scenes to Catherine, such as ―an apartment never used since some cousin or kin died in it about twenty years before,‖ or ―gloomy chamber … with only the feeble rays of a single lamp … walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as large as life, and the bed, of dark green stuff or purple velvet, presenting even a funeral appearance‖ (179; ch.20). In fact, Catherine Morland was already very eager to take her adventures in the abbey though she said to Henry that she shouldn‘t be easily frightened and thought the abbey has never been inhabited and left deserted for years.
As they drew near the abbey, Catherine‘s impatience for a look at the abbey grew, and in accordance with her novel reading, she thought Northanger Abbey, by its name, as a place with ―massy walls of grey stone, rising amidst a grove of ancient oaks, with the last beam of the sun playing in beautiful splendour on its high Gothic windows‖
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B. A. Thesis of Shandong University of Finance and Economics
(182; ch.20). But to her disappointment, the building stands too low and even without an antique chimney for her to discern. What‘s more, unlike those heroines in Gothic novels, she just passes between modern lodges and ―along a smooth, level road of fine gravel, without obstacle, alarm or solemnity of any kind, struck her as odd and inconsistent‖ (183; ch.20). General Tilney Eleanor, Henry‘s sister, are waiting to welcome her on the hall, and she is shown into a common drawing-room where the furniture is in elegance of modern taste and panes of the pointed arch, which Catherine hoped them to be the heaviest stonework and painted glass with dirt and cobwebs, are, on the contrary, large, clear, and light. The abbey is just a modern family house with large and lofty hall, broad staircase of shining oak, long wide gallery, ect., and the people are all so friendly that she can‘t feel any awful future misery that would happen to herself like what those heroines usually undergo in Gothic novels. The difference between her imagination and the abbey‘s real condition is very distressing for Catherine. II. Three Adventures in Northanger Abbey
Although feeling a little disappointed at the first sight on Northanger Abbey, out of her imagination, Catherine was delightful to be really in an abbey and began her imagined Gothic adventures with her observation.
When she was alone in her apartment, Catherine found that the walls, the floor, the windows, and the furniture were all handsome and comfortable which made her at ease. But she decided to lose no time in examining anything strange and she suddenly noticed a large high chest that was standing on the back in a deep recess of the fire-place. The sight of the chest made Catherine forget everything else, and she stood still, just gazing at it and wondering: ―This is strange indeed! … An immense heavy chest! – What can it hold? – Why should it be placed here? … I will look into it – cost me what it may‖ (187; ch.21). Driven by curiosity, she advanced and examined the chest closely. The chest was made of cedar, inlaid with some darker wood, and raised on a carved stand of the same, with a rusty silver lock and broken silver handles. With trembling hands and great difficulty as well, she finally raised up the lid, but to her astonishment, there was only a
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