Northanger Abbey (1986 film) Northanger Abbey (1986 film) Northanger Abbey is a 1986 made-for-television film adaptation of Jane Austen's novel "Northanger Abbey" (1818), and was originally broadcast on the A&E Network and the BBC in 1987. Northanger Abbey is the story of a young woman, Catherine Morland, who is invited to Bath, Somerset, with family friends, the Allens; they hope the waters at Bath will help Mr. Allen's gout. Catherine (called "Cathy" by her many younger siblings) has been quite sheltered all her life, escaping only by reading Gothic novels, and so is delighted to go to Bath. Mrs. Allen introduces Catherine to the
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