Balance Between Sense and Sensibility in Jane Austens Northanger Abbey

Balance Between Sense and Sensibility in Jane Austens Northanger AbbeyThroughout her un engrossd, Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen integrates parody with characterization to emphasize the necessity of a eternal rest between sense and sensibility while reflecting a theme of the mental institution of a young woman into the complexities of adult social life. This reinvigorated dejection be traced back as one of Jane Austens earliest works. It was written in 1798, alone not published until 1818, and is an excellent example of what Austen believed a novel should not be. In the work Jane Austens Novels Social Change and Literary Form, Julia Prewitt brownness states The evident purpose of Northanger Abbey is to burlesque the popular fiction of her day, to carry its conventions and assumptions to an the absurd extravagance (50.) To achieve her purpose Austen uses parody to portray a jovial version of a gothic novel while presenting false emotions of love story and concentrating on pure human existences and their mutual reactions. The writer of the pure novel sets out to delight us not by prodigality of invention, the debut of a large gallery of characters, the alternation of a large number of short lettered scenes, but by attention to the formal qualities of composition, to design, to the subordination of the parts to the whole, the whole being the exploration of the relations between his characters or of their relations to a cardinal situation or theme. (Allen, pp114.)In Northanger Abbey, Austen intended to reflect a contrast between a normal, healthy-natured girl and the romantic heroines of fiction thorough the use of characterization. By portraying the main character, Catherine Moorland, as a girl fairly affected with romantic notions, Jane Austen exhibits the co... ...ne show his sensibility. His imagination and creativity motivate him to memorize Gothic romances and to indulge in the effects that his inventive tales produce. His decision to marry Ca therine is motivated by feelings of love that further exemplifies his sensibility. Throughout the novel the readers put through an excellent display of Henrys ability to maintain equilibrium between the both qualities. He passes his knowledge onto Catherine to help her to become a better person. At the end of the novel it is apparent that Henry has taught the keys of his success to Catherine. Works CitedAllen, Walter. The slope Novel. New York E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1954. Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. 1818. Mineola, NY Dover Publications, 2000.Prewitt Brown, Julia. Jane Austens Novels Social Change and Literary Reform. Massachusetts Harvard University Press, 1979.