jane austen
...ronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?" she demands. "I cannot approve of it" (43).Her intrusion reminds us that the writing and reading of novels had certain benefits, mostly for women. Sentimental novels and their gothic substrain both encouraged women's literacy and emphasized women's perspective. Within Northanger Abbey we are able to separate the sympathetic characters from the antagonists by their attitudes toward reading. Furthermore, Catherine is recognizable as a true heroine because she is contrasted with the non-reading heroines Austen castigates. In short, Northanger Abbey demonstrates that a heroine who does not read is not heroic; writing and reading began to constitute true heroism for women with the rise of the sensibility and gothic genres.Over the course of the eighteenth century, women became increasingly literate. "While a gap between the number of male and female readers remained, it closed significantly over that period" (Barker-...