Northanger Abbey Mysteries of Udolpho," as it is the Gothic novel most frequently mentioned within this text"." Notably, Jane Austen sold the manuscript of Northanger Abbey to the same firm that published Radcliffe's novel in 1794. This outside text is first mentioned in Chapter Six, when Isabella and Catherine discuss the mystery "behind the black veil," and further establish their friendship based on their similar interests in novel genre, and their plans to continue reading other Gothic novels together. Austen further satirizes the novel through Catherine's stay at Northanger Abbey, believing that General Tilney has taken the role of Gothic novel villain.
Northanger Abbey novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it". In this famous moment, Austen's narrator acknowledges the hypocrisy in insulting