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Austen's Northanger Abbet is the most exuberant and perhaps the most daring of her adult works, combining numerous literary genres, parody, and humor. However, much of Austen's parody, and the social commentary it veils, is subversive and can only be seen after several readings, for Austen delights in tricking her readers as much as she does Catherine. This duplici tous humor becomes evident when comparing three scenes focused on maternal concern. The first scene presents Mrs. Morland as the anti-gothic or antisentimental mother, advising Catherine prior to her trip to Bath. Although Mrs. Morland, as Austen ironically tries to convince us, is "supposed to be" filled with "anxiety, . . . \jT\ thousand alarming presentiments of evil," and "sadness," she remains disappointingly calm, admonishing Catherine only to keep her throat wrapped warmly and her expenditures written down (18-19). Ignorant of "lords and baronets," and their "mischievousness," she "was wholly unsuspicious of danger to her daughter from their machinations" (18). Austen intends us here to laugh with Mrs. Morland, for we suspect that Catherine will not be subject to "violence" by wicked "noblemen" (18). But what we and Mrs. Morland do notknow, though we find out later on, is that Catherine willbe subject to violence from other unscrupulous men. Thus, what appears to be Mrs. Morland' s common-sense practicality reveals a lack of maternal knowledge, and hence concern about the dangers that Catherine will face, a lack that Austen underlines when Catherine returns from Northanger, dejected and miserable. When neither of her parents can guess the cause, Austen draws more censorious, serious attention to their ignorance: "They never once thought of her heart, which, for the parents of a young lady of seventeen, just returned from her first excursion from home, was odd enough!" [2Sh).
These episodes contrast with and are subtly referenced by the scene where Mr. Allen, in loco parentis, condemns "'[y^oung men and women driving about the country in open carriage s,'" and asks his wife whether she finds "'these kind of projects objectionable' " (104). Her response, humorously and characteristically, focuses on clothes: "Open carriages are nasty things. A clean gown is not five minutes wear in them. You are splashed getting in and getting out; and the wind takes your hair...