The Mysteries of Udolpho novel "The Romance of the Forest", plays a prominent role in Jane Austen's novel "Northanger Abbey", in which an impressionable young woman, after reading Radcliffe's novel, comes to see her friends and acquaintances as Gothic villains and victims with amusing results. "The Mysteries of Udolpho" is a quintessential Gothic romance, replete with incidents of physical and psychological terror; remote, crumbling castles; seemingly supernatural events; a brooding, scheming villain; and a persecuted heroine. Modern editors point out that only about one-third of the novel is set in the eponymous Gothic castle, and that the tone and style vary markedly between sections
Northanger Abbey it is not until the shocking wrongdoing against her brother that Catherine entirely separates herself from their friendship, stating that she may never speak to Isabella again, and is not as upset as she thought she would be. As this scene takes place almost immediately after Catherine's lesson about Gothic novels, it is a clear sign of her increasing maturity. Reading as a valuable tool for personal growth. In one of Austen's narrator's boldest proclamations, the narrator of "Northanger Abbey" exclaims upon the significance of reading novels, writing: "I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with