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Article: Austen's Northanger Abbey. (analysis of a Jane Austen novel)
- Article from:
- The Explicator
- Article date:
- March 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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What is in a name? Two widely used editions of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey provide the same interesting, but ultimately unavailing, conjecture about Austen's use of the name Richard in the novel.(1) The notes of the respective editions concern the book's famous opening paragraph, in which Austen ironically reverses the reader's expectations regarding the conventions of Gothic fiction. Of her atypically non-orphaned heroine, Catherine Morland, Austen writes, "Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard - and he had never been handsome" (Chapman 5:13, italics added).(2) The italicized phrase gives ...