YMMV / Northanger Abbey

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is Henry a good-humoured guy with his feet on the ground or is he a Smug Snake that's constantly condescending to Catherine?
  • How far wrong was Catherine's assessment of General Tilney? It is notable that even in his defence of his parents' relationship, Tilney admits that his mother 'had much to bear' and that his father's 'temper injured her' even while 'his judgement never did' - a very mealy-mouthed defence that strongly implies that General Tileny did harm his wife, even if it never escalated to murder or imprisonment.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: After the 2007 adaptation was broadcast, a letter to the Radio Times complained that the scriptwriter had added a jarring reference to baseball. That passage came word for word from the book. In fact, the OED records it as the first mention of baseball (by that name) in literature.
• Harsher in Hindsight: If Captain Frederick Tilney is engaged to an inconstant, penniless woman "It is all over with Frederick indeed! He is a deceased man—defunct in understanding" because General Tilney is gonna be furious.
• Les Yay: Isabella's friendship with Catherine, particularly when Austen mentions how they always "joined arms" when they were together and Isabella's undisguised jealousy of Catherine's budding friendship with Eleanor Tilney. That is only a modern construction, though. In the context of the culture, women holding hands (or joining arms) was an indicator of friendship, not necessarily a romantic relationship.
• Misaimed Fandom: Isabella's comments about her Undying Loyalty for her friends occasionally show up online as "inspiration quotes". The problem is that these quotes, in context, are just set-ups for Hypocritical Humour punchlines — they're not meant to be taken seriously; Isabella is a terrible friend. In fact, Catherine actually learns the importance of questioning your friends and sticking to your own morals.
• Nightmare Fuel: Catherine's daydreams in the ITV version are generally unnerving due to the muted lighting and creepy music, but special mention goes to the last one, where Catherine imagines James Locked in the Dungeon and finds Isabella being tortured on a rack by Captain Tilney, who smirks at her.
• Older Than They Think: This is much more studied these days than the literature it mentions, so much so that many modern readers have thought that Jane Austen invented most of the Gothic titles she says Catherine has read. As it turns out, they're all real.
• Retroactive Recognition: Carey Mulligan plays Isabella Thorpe in the 2007 version.
• Values Dissonance:
  • John Thorpe describes someone as being "rich as a Jew". This was intended to put Thorpe in a bad light as a Politically Incorrect Villain (Austen indrectly criticizes his xenophobia earlier in the story), but these remarks are much more shocking today than they were in the 19th century (where heroic characters in other novels say things like "I'm not in love with you for your land, what am I, Jewish?"). To modern eyes, this is instantly irredeemable and makes the reader wonder why James is best friends with a bigot, as opposed to it being just one of Thorpe's universally bad traits. The Setting Update version from The Austen Project doesn't change this at all, with the result that John comes off much worse much more quickly.
  • In addition, John would have come off as much worse to contemporary readers than to modern ones. He seems annoying and overbearing, but to Regency readers he would have come off as quite over-familiar and often extremely rude, particularly for repeatedly swearing in mixed-gender company. There's a reason it's written as "d—".
  • John and Isabella physically restrain Catherine when she, angered that John dared to speak on her behalf and cancel her plans with Eleanor, wants to go and tell her friend what really happened. While they have her by the arms, her brother James berates her for not wanting to do as they wish. In a modern light, this crosses the line.
• Values Resonance: The dangers of toxic friendship, from the emotional pain of being mistreated by a supposed friend to getting enmeshed in bad behavior for the sake of the friendship, is a lesson that young adults must learn today as often as they did in the Regency.

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