Haven't read Northhanger Abbey - it's one of the few Jane Austen's I just could not make it through. But you are correct it's Austen's satire of gothic romance. Although read more like a parody to me, which was why I struggled with it. Not a huge fan of parody.
I don't think that the romantic elements are necessarily meant to be traps for the mind or bad. Just that taking them to the extreme...is. For example - Willow's romance with Kennedy in the comics is fairly mature and reasonable. It's also notably the only romance that seems to survive in either series. All the others fall apart. What is different is that Willow and Kennedy aren't joined at the hip, they can be friends with people who don't necessarily like their significant other, and they can spend lots of time apart. They do not only have eyes for one another. It's a tempered romance.
I think the critique here is of gothic romance or the melodramatic aspects of romance, the swoon bits. There's some hilarious lines - such as "When I kiss you I want to die" or "When I think of the future - all I see, all I can think of is you."
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-04-25 09:51 pm (UTC)I don't think that the romantic elements are necessarily meant to be traps for the mind or bad. Just that taking them to the extreme...is. For example - Willow's romance with Kennedy in the comics is fairly mature and reasonable. It's also notably the only romance that seems to survive in either series. All the others fall apart. What is different is that Willow and Kennedy aren't joined at the hip, they can be friends with people who don't necessarily like their significant other, and
they can spend lots of time apart. They do not only have eyes for one another. It's a tempered romance.
I think the critique here is of gothic romance or the melodramatic aspects of romance, the swoon bits. There's some hilarious lines - such as "When I kiss you I want to die" or
"When I think of the future - all I see, all I can think of is you."