Bianca’s Comments (group member since Feb 02, 2013)

Bianca’s comments from the Jane Austen group.

Cari wrote: "I have not read The Mysteries of Udolpho, so it is rather hard for me to determine whether NA could be considered fanfiction or not. What thinks thou, Bianca?"

I only considered it after hearing an Austen scholar talk about Northanger at length. Maybe he'd been drinking the Kool-Aid too much, but he said that Austen didn't entirely hate Radcliffe, and that NA was really just a way to differentiate "romance" from the "novel" during a time when anything written by a lady would have been dismissed as foder anyway.

While there are no continued characters or plot-points I would consider that without Radcliffe's Udolpho and the craze that went along with it, we would not have NA as Austen wrote it. In these terms I suppose if you relate fanfiction to a broader definition than purely a riff off of an original, and allow some room for mere inspiration then things look kind of different.

Yes, NA was a parody, but I think the way I had been taught to read the novel was disregarding the idea that Austen would have had respect for Radcliffe and other romance novelists. I mean, Austen would have had to read all the novels she pokes fun at, and I'm sure she would have had a bit of respect for other female authors during that time.

I hate to be THAT person but...
"THAT RING BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!"

The best part was the end, when the tour was technically over our guide took the more avid fans along where Wentworth and Anne would have walked. She recited some of his lines. It was FAB.

If anyone else here takes the trip to Bath I have to highly recommend the walking tour given by the Jane Austen Centre. Our guide had been doing it for years and was a complete PRO and Austen aficionado/fangirl.

This topic may offend some or intrigue others, but I'm asking this in the broad sense of the term "fanfiction." We know that Northanger Abbey was written to poke fun at romance novels, but does this parody in any way also indicate some respect for Ann Radcliffe?

I'm asking because the topic of "first fanfiction" came up in my lecture this past semester and I bounced around the idea that Northanger could fit a loose definition.

So would you consider Northanger Abbey a form of fanfiction?

Bravo Soph for taking the waters at Bath. Few are brave enough to do so.

I tried reading Austen at 10, but I felt that watching the movie versions really helped me after that. As a pre-teen I didn't have solid knowledge of the Regency era or a good grasp of the language they used, so seeing the movies really helped and led me to keep reading her work.

Persuasion is short, but sweet.