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Learn the ways of the world
- At the start of the novel, she has very little experience judging people’s characters or intentions, and does not trust her own intuition. When she is taken to the holiday town of Bath by the Allens, wealthy friends of her family, and meets the Tilneys and Thorpes, she begins to learn the ways of the world.
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Why does Catherine Morland go to Bath?
Why did Catherine go to Bath?
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The 17-year-old Catherine eagerly accepts the Allens' invitation. Catherine is young and naïve. Her life has been relatively sheltered, so Bath is a new world for her. In Bath, Catherine is introduced to Henry Tilney, a young clergyman who impresses Catherine with his wit and pleasant conversation.
- Key Facts
Setting (place) The first half of the novel takes place...
- Character List
Northanger Abbey characters include: Catherine Morland,...
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- Catherine Morland
Catherine Morland. Northanger Abbey was the first novel Jane...
- Key Facts
A seventeen-year-old raised in a rural parsonage with nine brothers and sisters, Catherine Morland is open, honest, and naïve about the hypocritical ways of society. Her family is neither rich nor poor, and she is unaware of how much stock many people put in wealth and rank. Catherine was a plain little girl, and her parents never expected ...
- A Young Lady’s Entrance Into The World
- Gothic Horrors
- Defence of The Novel
This, the sub-title of Fanny Burney’s Evelina, was a fruitful genre for female writing. An inexperienced girl who has grown up in the country is introduced into the social world of London or Bath, with all the novelties of experience and variety of characters that can be imagined. To preserve her reputation and attract the right kind of man to be h...
Jane Austen’s earliest writing had been in the form of burlesque, that is, making fun of the literary convention by exaggerating or flattening its features. The adventures that befall Catherine at Northanger, always ending in bathos, are a burlesque on the Gothic novel tradition. Gothic novels were usually set in castles or abbeys in mountainous re...
Northanger Abbey contains Jane Austen’s famous defence of the novelist’s art. Catherine Morland’s favourite reading is novels. ‘Yes, novels,’ Jane Austen writes, ‘for if the heroine of one novel be not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?’ She gives a specimen of the common cant: It is a nice irony t...
He explains that his father's bad behavior was due to John Thorpe. In Bath, when John thought Catherine loved him, he told General Tilney that Catherine was from a very wealthy family. The General then ran into John much later on his trip away from Northanger Abbey.
It is likely because of Mrs. Morland’s innocence that at the beginning of the novel she allows Catherine to go to Bath under the care of Mrs. Allen, an adult without the wisdom to help Catherine navigate Bath society. Catherine also assumes that no one she knows would choose to take an unkind, immoral, or inappropriate action on purpose.
Catherine is born and grows up in Fullerton with her parents and her nine siblings. She goes to Bath with her neighbors, the Allens. Catherine attends her first ball in Bath and meets the witty and handsome Henry Tilney. After a few days in Bath, Catherine meets the Thorpes and learns that her older brother James is friends with John Thorpe.
