Northanger Abbey Analysis

Austen uses, and disrupts, a lot of the symbols and images that characterized popular Gothic novels in her spoof of the Gothic novel. The Abbey itself serves as a symbol of the Gothic, and of Cathe...

Jane Austen really loved her threes in Northanger Abbey. The book prominently features three families and three sets of siblings. The action in the book also occurs in three distinct places: Fuller...

The third person narrative is primarily filtered through Catherine, hence the limited part of the omniscience. We get most of the story through her eyes and we are also privy to some of Catherine's...

Northanger Abbey is primarily a light-hearted comedy with lots of scenes specifically designed for a laugh. While it isn't a slap-stick, laugh-a-minute, Northanger Abbey does have all the elements...

Northanger Abbey is a text that does not take itself, or any of its characters, too seriously. In fact, its main character is most often the butt of the joke. The novel makes fun of its characters,...

You might be wondering how those three items go to together. It's a bit of a strange mix, but Austen pulls it off. Northanger Abbey is an undoubtedly witty book. The dialogue and the narration are...

Northanger Abbey refers to the castle-like building that one of the book's main families, the Tilneys, call home. With a title like this, it seems like the whole book would be taking place at, well...

Northanger Abbey has a very neat and tidy and rather clichéd ending: all the nice main characters get married to other nice characters and live happily ever after. All the mean characters end...

In terms of plot and style, Northanger Abbey isn't that hard to follow. Sure, the language is a bit old fashioned and some of the speech patterns do take a little getting used to, but the book is p...

We meet Catherine Morland her family, and their neighbors, the Allens. Catherine travels to Bath with the Allens and meets the Tilneys and the Thorpes.This part of the novel screams initial situati...

From the first chapter until Isabella's engagementThis stage encompasses the entire time in Bath where misunderstandings abound. Catherine spends her time misunderstanding what the Thorpes are up t...

Catherine travels to Bath and meets the Tilneys and the Thorpes. She falls for Henry Tilney, but she is pursued by John Thorpe. Isabella Thorpe gets engaged to Catherine's older brother James, but...

Though it was written between 1798-1803, Northanger Abbey wasn't published until 1818, after Jane Austen's death. This book was published along with Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel. Interested...

There's not a lot of sex in this book. But that doesn't mean there aren't hints of things, if you read between the lines. Take, for example, the relationship between Isabella and Captain Tilney. Th...

Rev. Thomas Moore, "Beggar's Petition" (1.1)Alexander Pope, "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" (1.4)Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1.5)James Thomson, "Spring" (16)S...