The Gothic Hallucination, Symbolization, and the Real: A Lacanian Reading of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

It has long been a controversial issue for the critics of Northanger Abbey to argue about Jane Austen's valuation of the Gothic genre as revealed in the novel. For those who read Northanger Abbey as an explicit anti-gothic declaration, one of the key evidences to be discussed in the text is Henry's sonorous instruction of enlightenment addressed to Catherine when he detects her undue simulation of the Abbey as another Udolpho and his father General Tilney as another Montoni, both the female Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe's fictitious creation. Yet, for other critics who posit the author's vindication of the Gothic genre in the novel, Henry's enlightenment is studied very much against the grain. Unable to intuit the potential evilness of the General as Catherine is, Henry is studied as a victim of enlightenment who sees only the bright side of knowledge and reason, whereas Catherine's power of fancy acquired from her Gothic reading makes it possible for her to access the real villainies of the General. To integrate both the two trends of criticism, this paper aims to enter into a dialectic discussion between the faculty of reason and that of imagination. By illustrating Catherine's growth in her rebalance of the two faculties in the novel, which makes her see what Henry misses in life, this paper argues that for Austen Gothic novels are never worthless.

並列關鍵字

Gothic genre ； female Gothic romance ； the imaginary ； the symbolic ； the real ； enlightenment ； female Quixote

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