Northanger Abbey is a two-volum novel written by Jane Austen from 1798-9 and published posthumously in 1817. In this novel, the author depicts the adventures of three young ladies, Catherine Morland, Isabelle Thorpe and Eleanor Tilney in their journey at Northanger Abbey. With this pattern, Jane Austen draws on the tradition of gothic novel but not to reproduce them. On the contrary, she parodies this genre. Here her «heroines» are fond of gothic stories and imagine live the same ones in the Abbey. Besides, the confrontation between their dreams and their experiences compares Northern Abbey to a conduct novel. In this excerpt, Catherine experiences a frightening adventure in one of the abbey’s room. This moment encapsulates one of the most important characteristic of the novel : the parody of gothic novel. To study this fact, we will analyse this passage as a text representative of gothic litterature, then we will see how the author inserts irony in the text making it a parody of gothic text .

In this passage, many elements conjure up a gothic novel. First, the setting is typically representative of gothic atmosphere. The scene takes place in an abbey, so in a dark and huge place. At line 2, the author evokes «the door», at line 6 «the cavity» and at line 24 «a darkness impenetrable and immovable» of the abbey. The characters also refers as gothic novels’ characters. Here, we’re reading the adventures of a young lady, Catherine who is an emblem of innocent and naive character. Indeed, throughout the passage, she is alone and powerless in view of this situation. From line 24 to 40, when the light of the candle goes out, she does nothing , «groping her way to the bed» and jumps «hastily in». Besides, the narator insists on this impotence linked to the character’s fear. We notice the lexical field of the fear, for instance at lines 8 and 9 the narrator explains that «her heart fluttered, her knees trembled and her cheeks grew pale», then at 22 the