ABSTRACT
Jane Austen's visits to Netley and other former monasteries familiarized her with an English past stained by greed and sacrilege. Austen scholars have largely paid little attention to the role of the Dissolution in the novel and to the political issues surrounding the transfer of the house from ecclesiastical to secular hands. In Northanger Abbey, she distils the lessons of these abbey visits and subtly interrogates the claims of those who benefited from the monastic dissolution. Austen grasps the historical circumstances surrounding the transformation of former monasteries, and her evocation of the past signals this novel's participation in a deep and often divisive conversation about the Dissolution of the Monasteries and its consequences for English life. Netley Abbey and the literature it inspired provide a context for understanding Northanger Abbey's treatment of a former sacred property. For most, the abbey is significant only as an appropriate setting for a supposedly Gothic tale.
