Is this a gothic burlesque?

There are very few claims more common about Northanger Abbey than that it is a burlesque of Ann Radcliffe. Okay, this is arrogant and perverse but I don't think so. Here is why:

First, let's consider the publication history, Austen begins writing the first version, called Susan, in 1798. She sells this no longer existent text to a publisher in 1803. The publisher pays for it but does not produce an edition. They then sit on it and refuse to let Austen peddle it elsewhere unless she buy back the rights for 10 pounds (a big chunk of money for Austen).

While this book is sitting in limbo, a man named Eaton Stannard Barrett publishes a book called The Heroine in which a girl who is a huge fan of gothic fiction imagines herself to be like the heroine of same and has funny misadventures. It is a successful book.

Austen reads The Heroine, and enjoys it and writes to Cassandra:

‘I finished the Heroine last night & was very much amused by it. I wonder James did not like it better. It diverted me exceedingly . . . I have torn through the 3^d. vol. of the Heroine, & do not think it falls off.—It is a delightful burlesque, particularly on the Radcliffe style’

Is this the way Austen would respond if she understood her own book, the one the publisher refuses to put on the market, to also be a burlesque of Radcliffe? Is this the way she'd respond seeing Barrett making money that rightfully should have been hers? I don't think so and I think the only explanation is that Susan, later Northanger Abbey, is not a burlesque of Radclifffe.

Yes, she picks on Radcliffe a lot, but she picks on lots of novels. And we don't know what Susan looked like; that is we don't know how much revision happened. When Susan was written, Radcliffe was very much in style. When it was revised into Northanger Abbey, she was much less so.

What is it then? Answer: don't know yet.