The days of the week

Carol Burnett used to do a parody of the soap opera Days of our Lives that she called The Days of the Week. It was a parody driven by pure love. Burnett loved the show and even appeared on it.

If Northanger Abbey is a burlesque of anything it is a burlesque by someone who loved novels, even somewhat dubious novels. I'm only the 9 millionth person to cite this I'm sure but here goes anyway:

“And what are you reading, Miss — ?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

Austen didn't think all novels met this standard but she thought a lot of them did, including a few we don't hold in such high regard today. Such as, for example, Sir Charles Grandison, the least read of Richardson's works but a favourite of both Catherine Morland's mother and her creator.