I had thought I’d read all of Jane Austen’s works… I was so sure I’d tried this one many times and found it dreadfully dull. But it turned out I’d been conflating it with Persuasion and Mansfield Park all this time. I actually discovered a new Austen!
While it wasn’t nearly as boring as those two, though, it also wasn’t nearly as good as Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, or Emma (three of my all-time favorites). This one is apparently a send-up of Gothic novels of the era, or at least it starts out that way. It then just follows Catherine Moreland as she navigates the same social class divisions as the other novels, confused about who her real friends are, and thwarted in her attempts to spend time with the man she likes, while binging on “The Mysteries of Udolpho” and mistaking real life for the soap opera-like plotlines in Radcliffe’s most famous work. I think this one didn’t resonate with me as well as the other three because Catherine’s character was, to me, comparatively uninteresting. I couldn’t identify with her, so I didn’t really care what happened to her.
My rating: ***
Language: none
Violence: none
Sexual content: none
Political content: none
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