SOURCE: "Northanger Abbey: Some Problems of Engagement," in Jane Austen: Six Novels and Their Methods, The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1986, 10-30.

Below, Williams analyzes style in Northanger Abbey, arguing that the novel exhibits a complex unity that eludes simple classification.

'Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.'

(catherine Morland on the Mysteries of Udolpho)

Everybody knows that Northanger Abbey is a parody of the Gothic novel. Everyone sees that it is also, to borrow the sub-title of Fanny Burney's Evelina, the 'history of a young lady's entrance into the world'. And a well-established tradition insists that these two aspects of the novel are incompatible, even that the existence of each one is an active...