"Northanger Abbey (1817) is a comingofage
novel published posthumously with the intent to satirize Gothic
novels, the popular genre of the day. written mainly as a sort of escape literature for women. It was Jane Austen's
first novel in which she introduces a seventeenyearold
girl called Catherine Morland, a daughter of a country
clergyman, who comes to Bath, a popular spa resort, where she was invited by Mr. and Mrs. Allen to experience
the life of polite society there and to find a suitable match. She is a nice looking girl who enjoys reading novels and
appears as someone who is goodhearted,
candid and of a sweet temper, although a little bit impulsive and naive.
She is inexperienced at reading people and this causes her several problems and misunderstandings.
In Bath, Catherine meets new acquaintances such as Isabella Thorpe and her brother John, Henry Tilney
and his sister Eleanor. She quickly befriends Isabella who introduces her into reading Gothic novels such as Ann
Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) or Romance of the Forest (1791). These novels influence wrongly
Catherine's perception of the world and lead her to suspect innocent people of horrible crimes such as when she
thinks that General Tilney, Henry's father, had murdered his wife. Catherine also fails to recognize the
manipulative nature of Isabella who breaks the heart of her brother James when she begins a silly flirtation with
Frederick Tilney. Isabella is a golddigger
and a superficial person fond of gossip. She is not rich, and therefore she
seeks a wealthy husband in order to secure her future. The mansion of the Tilney's called Northanger Abbey plays
an important role in Catherine's overactive imagination. It stands alone as a symbol of the Gothic, and therefore,
as soon as Catherine steps inside, she starts to think of herself as a heroine of a Gothic novel. For example, once
when she happens to be in the mansion on her own, she unlocks a mysterious cabinet hoping to find there an old
manuscript and suprisingly finds only laundry bills.
Jane Austen uses Catherine in the story as a target to mock the Gothic conventions wanting to present her
exaggerated behaviour to the reader as something comical. However, when Catherine begins to suspect General
Tilney of a murder of his own wife, it seriously damages her relationship with Henry Tilney. Until that moment
Henry was behaving in a courteous and protective way towards Catherine but her paranoid fears drove him away
from her. Catherine is heartbroken and returns back home. It is only later on when Henry realises he was too strict
on her, wants to reconcile so that the two young people can get back together and find hapiness in marriage to
which Catherine's parents give happily consent."

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