Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey is Jane Austen’s novel about Catherine Morland’s education in reading people as well as books. A visit to Bath introduces new friendships and courtship, while her stay with the Tilneys encourages imaginative suspicions nourished by Gothic novels. The comedy depends on the distance between expected mysteries and recognizable human motives. Yet Catherine’s errors do not make the people around her harmless: money, status, and self-interest also distort judgment. Austen’s playful narrator defends the possibilities of fiction while showing why sympathy and imagination need the guidance of observation and experience.