Northanger Abbey is perhaps a transitional work with respect to Austen’s humor. It is more obviously making fun of something, namely Gothic novels and the overwrought heroines who inhabit them. It was the first novel she wrote after the Juvenilia, before her more mature works. The humor is sharper and more obvious than in later novels.

The irony in this novel operates several ways: Catherine Morland’s expectations differ considerably from her reality, and both differ from what we as readers know to be real; in addition, both characters and readers are familiar with Gothic novels, but view them differently, as shown in Chapter 20 when Henry Tilney discusses the abbey with Catherine:

“. . . Is it not a fine old place, just like what one reads about?”
“And 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?
“Oh! Yes–I do not think I should be easily frightened . . .” (1088)

     Yet the humor is subtle enough that people who ought to know better, such as book publishers, seem quite able to overlook it. In at least one instance, Northanger Abbey was marketed as a Gothic novel. Northanger Abbey is not a Gothic novel and cannot be mistaken for one save by readers whose understanding of irony approaches that of the smarter members of the legume family. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a Gothic novel. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is also a Gothic novel. In real Gothic novels, there is . . . this is the important bit . . . actually someone or something of which one might justifiably be frightened! No one in Northanger Abbey qualifies. John Thorpe is the worst of the lot, and the strongest possible description of him in the spectrum of supernatural horror is “mildly alarming.” The entire novel is distinctly lacking in melodramatic violence, incest, aberrant psychology, brooding terror, ghosts, and ectoplasm.

No one at all is murdered in any of Austen’s novels, or even lightly maimed. The Eumenides make not even the briefest of cameo appearances. Of divine retribution there is no trace. When the main characters marry, as is inevitable in a Jane Austen novel, we do not learn that they are related by blood, because they are not. While John and Isabella Thorpe are tedious, neither appears to be actually insane. Readers may experience slight trepidation when it seems as though Catherine may not marry Henry Tilney; however, terror and horror should both be considered abnormally strong reactions. Although General Tilney's wife has, most regrettably, passed on, she expired offstage and her spirit appears to have gone to its rest quietly; although the General himself is somewhat unpleasant, he is not a murderous usurper and does not attempt to ravish anyone. There you have it: Northanger Abbey is not a gothic novel.

---Stacie Hanes, 2001. Excerpted from "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Pemberly; Or, An Unusually Foul-Tempered Explication of Austenian Humor." Full Text, complete with irrelevancies, here. Note to scurrilous types: do not submit the paper to a professor as your own work. They will not believe you, unless you have turned in similar work in the past—in which case I expect you'd be perfectly happy writing your own paper.