Northanger Abbey

Summary

Northanger Abbey follows Catherine Morland, the unremarkable seventeen-year-old daughter of a country clergyman, whom the narrator teasingly insists no one would have supposed born to be a heroine. Catherine is a devoted reader of Gothic novels, especially Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Invited to Bath by her wealthy neighbours Mr and Mrs Allen, she enters society. She meets Henry Tilney, a witty, kind young clergyman who teases her about novels and journals, and his gentle sister Eleanor. She also befriends the gushing, mercenary Isabella Thorpe and her boastful, lying brother John, who pursues Catherine, while Isabella becomes engaged to Catherine's brother James. John Thorpe repeatedly tricks Catherine into missing engagements with the Tilneys. Isabella, learning that James's fortune is modest, flirts with Henry's elder brother, the dashing Captain Frederick Tilney. Meanwhile General Tilney, Henry's imposing father, misled by John Thorpe into believing Catherine an heiress, invites her to stay at the family home, Northanger Abbey. Catherine, expecting a Gothic ruin, is disappointed to find it modernised. Nevertheless her imagination runs wild: a mysterious chest turns out to contain a bedspread, a manuscript found in a cabinet proves to be a laundry list, and, learning that the late Mrs Tilney died suddenly and that the General avoids her rooms, Catherine half-suspects that he murdered or imprisoned his wife. Henry discovers her suspicions and gently but firmly rebukes her, reminding her that they live in England, among Christians and laws, and that his mother died of an illness. Mortified, Catherine resolves to correct her imagination. News comes that Isabella has jilted James for Captain Tilney, who in turn abandons her. Then the General, having learned from John Thorpe that the Morlands are poor, abruptly orders Catherine out of the house, sending her home alone by post-chaise. Henry, ashamed of his father, follows her to Fullerton and proposes. The General consents once he learns the Morlands are respectable, and after Eleanor makes a good marriage, the couple marry. The narrator closes by wondering whether the book recommends parental tyranny or filial disobedience.

Plot or Argument

• Volume I: Bath

  Catherine enters Bath society, meets Henry and Eleanor Tilney and the Thorpes, and suffers John Thorpe's schemes; the narrator defends the novel.

• Volume II, Ch. 1–4: Invitation

  Isabella's engagement to James and flirtation with Captain Tilney; the General's invitation to Northanger.

• Volume II, Ch. 5–10: The Abbey

  Catherine's Gothic expectations, the chest, the manuscript, suspicions about Mrs Tilney's death and Henry's rebuke.

• Volume II, Ch. 11–16: Expulsion and resolution

  Isabella's treachery revealed, Catherine's abrupt dismissal, Henry's proposal and the General's consent.

Characters

• Catherine Morland, protagonist

  Naive, good-hearted reader of Gothic novels who learns to judge real life.

• Henry Tilney, hero

  Witty, kind clergyman who teaches and teases Catherine and marries her.

• Eleanor Tilney, Henry's sister

  Gentle, lonely young woman who befriends Catherine.

• General Tilney, Henry's father

  Domineering, mercenary father who invites and then expels Catherine.

• Isabella Thorpe, false friend

  Flirtatious, fortune-hunting friend who jilts Catherine's brother.

• John Thorpe, Isabella's brother

  Boastful, lying suitor who misrepresents Catherine's fortune.

• James Morland, Catherine's brother

  Honest young man jilted by Isabella.

• Mrs Allen, chaperone

  Kindly but vacuous woman preoccupied with clothes.

• Captain Frederick Tilney, Henry's brother

  Dashing officer who flirts with Isabella and abandons her.

Lessons

• Reading well, judging well

  Catherine's mistake is not reading novels but failing to distinguish fiction from life. Austen defends the novel while showing that good judgment must be learned.

  • Is Catherine's suspicion of the General entirely wrong?
  • What does Henry teach Catherine, and what does she teach him?

• Real villains are ordinary

  The General is no Gothic murderer, but his greed and cruelty in expelling Catherine are real. Austen suggests that everyday selfishness is the true danger.

  • Is the General a villain?
  • How do the Thorpes compare with Gothic villains?
  • What does Isabella's behaviour say about friendship?

• Defending the novel

  In Volume I, Chapter 5, the narrator defends novels as works displaying 'the greatest powers of the mind'. The book is itself an argument for the seriousness of fiction.

  • Why does Austen interrupt the story to defend novels?
  • What genres today are looked down on as Gothic novels once were?

Context

The novel satirises the craze for Gothic fiction of the 1790s, especially Ann Radcliffe's novels, and depicts Bath as a fashionable resort of the marriage market. It also reflects contemporary debates about whether novel-reading corrupted young women.

Composition

Written around 1798–1799 under the title 'Susan', it was sold to Crosby & Co. in 1803 for £10 but not published. Austen bought it back around 1816, renamed the heroine Catherine, and added an advertisement apologising that parts were obsolete. It was published posthumously in December 1817 (dated 1818) with Persuasion.

Reception

Initially regarded as a slight early work, it is now valued as a sharp metafictional comedy and a key text about reading. The 'horrid novels' Isabella recommends were long thought invented but are real books, identified by Michael Sadleir in the 1920s.

Comparisons

• don-quixote

  Catherine, like Don Quixote, reads her world through a favourite genre and must learn to see clearly.

• cold-comfort-farm

  Gibbons's parody of rural melodrama descends from Austen's parody of the Gothic, with a sensible heroine at the centre.

• frankenstein

  Published within months of each other, Frankenstein exemplifies the Gothic novel Austen gently mocks, but takes its terrors seriously.

• persuasion

  Published together in 1817, Austen's earliest and last completed novels make a striking pair of youth and maturity.

• the-turn-of-the-screw-and-the-aspern-papers

  James's governess, like Catherine, may be reading a Gothic plot into a country house; James leaves the question open where Austen resolves it.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening chapter, where the narrator lists all the ways Catherine Morland fails to be a heroine: a plain childhood, a cheerful clergyman father, a mother who survives childbirth. Notice how Austen builds a heroine out of negatives.
• The narrator's defense of the novel in Vol. I, Ch. 5, where Austen steps out of the story to rebuke novelists who mock novels. Ask why she places it so early.
• John Thorpe's repeated lies in Bath: his boasts about his horse and gig, his false report that the Tilneys have driven away, and the carriage ride that carries Catherine past the waiting Tilneys.
• Catherine's first nights at the abbey in Vol. II, Ch. 6-7: the mysterious chest that holds a counterpane and the hidden roll of paper that turns out to be a laundry list.
• Henry's rebuke in Vol. II, Ch. 9 and the General's sudden expulsion of Catherine in Ch. 13. Compare the imaginary Gothic villain with the real unkindness of a greedy father.

Key terms and names

Gothic novel

A popular kind of romance set in castles and abbeys, full of secret passages, hidden manuscripts, and tyrannical villains. Catherine has read so many that she expects Northanger to hold the same secrets.

The Mysteries of Udolpho

Ann Radcliffe's 1794 Gothic novel, which Catherine and Isabella read together in Bath. Henry Tilney admits he read it in two days with his hair standing on end.

Bath

The spa town where Volume I is set, with its Pump Room, Upper and Lower Rooms, and assemblies. It is the marketplace of the novel's marriage plots and friendships.

Pump Room

The fashionable room in Bath where visitors drank the mineral waters and walked to see and be seen. Catherine looks for Henry there and Isabella performs her friendship there.

Northanger Abbey

The Tilney family home, a former religious house modernized by the General. Its new windows and comfortable furniture disappoint Catherine, who had pictured a ruin.

General Tilney

Henry's father, who courts Catherine as a supposed heiress on John Thorpe's word and expels her when Thorpe tells him the opposite. He is the novel's true, ordinary villain.

Fullerton

Catherine's home village, where her father is the clergyman. Her return there alone in Vol. II and Henry's arrival after her bring the story back to plain, honest ground.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does John Thorpe trick Catherine into missing her walk with Henry and Eleanor Tilney, and how does Catherine set things right?
2. Comprehension What does Catherine find in the chest and in the cabinet during her first nights at Northanger, and what had she expected to find?
3. Comprehension Why does General Tilney first invite Catherine to Northanger, and why does he later send her away so suddenly?
4. Interpretation In Vol. II, Ch. 9 Henry tells Catherine to remember that they are English and Christians and to consult her own sense of the probable. What exactly is her error, and is it only an error of too much novel-reading?
5. Interpretation Catherine suspected the General of a Gothic crime and was wrong, yet he does treat her cruelly. Was her suspicion entirely mistaken, or did she misjudge the kind of wrong he was capable of?
6. Interpretation Isabella Thorpe speaks constantly of friendship and devotion. How does Austen let the reader see through her words before Catherine does?
7. Interpretation Why does Austen defend the novel in Vol. I, Ch. 5 and through Henry in Ch. 14 while also making fun of a girl who reads too many of them?
8. Big Question Can stories train us to judge real people well, or do they more often lead us to misjudge them? What makes the difference?

Faith Connections

• Proverbs 14:15 (Scripture)

  The simple believes every word, but the prudent looks well to his going. Catherine believes John Thorpe's boasts, Isabella's vows, and her own Gothic fancies, and the novel traces her growth from simplicity toward prudence.

• Philippians 4:8 (Scripture)

  Paul tells the Philippians to think on whatever is true, honest, just, and of good report. Henry's rebuke in Vol. II, Ch. 9 calls Catherine back from imagined horrors to what is true and probable, and from suspicion to charity toward his family.

• Augustine, Confessions I.13 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine recalls weeping as a boy over Dido's death in the Aeneid while feeling nothing for his own spiritual state. Like Catherine at Northanger, he had let the feelings stirred by a story outrun his judgment of real life, and both books ask how reading should be ordered.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Novels can display the greatest powers of the mind and deserve respect. But a reader who mistakes a novel's conventions for the rules of real life will misjudge the people around her, as Catherine imagines murder at Northanger while missing Isabella's falseness and the General's greed. Good judgment comes from consulting one's understanding, observation, and sense of the probable. Therefore the cure for Catherine is not to stop reading but to read and live with discernment.

Rhetorical device: irony through narratorial intrusion. In Vol. I, Ch. 1 the narrator opens by saying no one who had seen Catherine Morland in infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine, then lists her ordinary qualities as if they were defects. The narrator keeps stepping forward like this, most fully in the defense of novels in Ch. 5, so that the book comments on its own form as it goes.

Debate: Resolved: Catherine Morland's Gothic suspicions of General Tilney were closer to the truth than Henry Tilney admits.

Memory Work

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid

Writing Prompts

Essay: Northanger Abbey both defends novels and mocks a reader who takes them too seriously. Using the narrator's defense in Vol. I, Ch. 5, the chest and laundry list in Vol. II, and Henry's rebuke in Vol. II, Ch. 9, argue what Austen thinks a good reader of fiction must learn.

Comparison with Don Quixote: Don Quixote and Catherine Morland both read so many romances that they mistake the world for a story. Compare how Cervantes and Austen treat their deluded readers, and argue which author is kinder to the reader and which is more serious about the dangers of imagination.

Medical Lens

Medical content is slight but pointed. Catherine's Gothic suspicion that Mrs Tilney was murdered or imprisoned is corrected by Henry, who explains that his mother died of a sudden illness (a 'bilious fever' in many readings of the passage) attended by physicians. The episode is often cited in discussions of imagination, suggestibility and the line between anxious fantasy and reasonable suspicion.

• Vol. II, Ch. 8–9

  Catherine's suspicions about Mrs Tilney's death and Henry's account of her illness and the physicians who attended her.

  Fever InfectionPhysicians DoctorsNeurosis Anxiety

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write Catherine's own Gothic novel, as she would have written it at seventeen.

• Essay

  Compare Austen's defence of the novel with modern defences of genre fiction or video games.

• Classroom

  Read a chapter of The Mysteries of Udolpho alongside Volume II, Chapters 5–9. How does Austen parody Radcliffe?

Further Reading

• The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe

• Jane Austen: A Life, Claire Tomalin

• The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole