Now that you’ve finished the book, here are some prompts you might want to respond to concerning Northanger Abbey:
- The one character about whom Catherine is inclined to think the worst is General Tilney. Why is this? She is humiliated when Henry realizes how her imagination has run away with her, but how mistaken is she really regarding his general character?
- What about Henry himself? How responsible is he for setting Catherine up for her expectations at the Abbey? Is Tilney a closet romantic despite his seeming reasonableness at times?
- Catherine’s suspicions of Gothic evil turn out to be wrong, the fantasies of a young, impressionable girl––or do they? Is there actual evil in the novel ? If there is real evil, what is its nature, where does it lie, and what, if anything, is its connection with Catherine’s Gothic illusions?
- Perhaps respond to this passage (slightly shortened and reworded) from an analysis of the novel by Iva Jankovic:
We can see the changes that Catherine undergoes in the novel in two ways: 1) as an awakening and transition from the romantic world into reality, and 2) as a molding of a social outsider into the “standards” of society.
The first transition could be said to teach Catherine that reality is not nearly so dramatic and romantic as it’s presented in Gothic novels. She gains common sense and learns to think rationally (and possibly even cynically?) about the world around her.
The second transition, though, is one Catherine is forced into. From being a tomboy in her childhood, she is taken to Bath, where she must learn what it means to be an 18th century woman: to dress appropriately, to have good manners, to talk about clothes and hair and boys. She learns she must conform to other’s expectations if she is to get anywhere in life
So, the question Jankovic asks is this: Does Catherine start out as a zombie? Or does she become one?
When I started reading Northanger Abbey, I was excited to find out why the book is considered a gothic novel. It’s almost as if Austen is poking at the genre, hinting at tropes through Catherine. When Catherine went to Northanger Abbey, this spooky grand estate, she started getting caught up in her imagination. So many elements within the female gothic genre were presented through Catherine and her perspective. I thought this was interesting because nothing supernatural or unusual was actually occurring, but her descriptions of how eerie things were made me believe she desperately wanted to feel like the main character of a gothic. Is this why Austen uses humor in this piece anyway? Maybe she wanted to highlight how easy it is to feel a part of something when you get lost in a good book. She contributed to the desire for fear when people go for a gothic novel. I think Austen used Catherine’s character to represent her audience. Young women at the time must have gotten just as lost in their gothics as Catherine did in hers.
I believe that in its own way Catherine is living in a true Gothic novel, and just doesn’t fully realize it. This makes the whole story so funny and ironic because during at first read I kept asking myself how this was gothic. But getting into the last chapters you start to really pick up on what is really going on. Catherine is an impressionable/ oblivious heroine but it isn’t to an obnoxious extent. Catherine did not grow up in the “Bath lifestyle” so she isn’t educated on what to do. This makes it easier to take advantage of her and morphe her opinions. This leads to the evil of Northanger Abbey, which I believe to be the Tropes family. They are also not classic evil characters, but they are possessive and misleading. Catherine had grown to love the Tilneys’ and enjoyed their walks through the country, but more time with the Tilneys’ means less time with the Tropes’. This ends up with one of the Tropes lying to Catherine about the whereabouts of Miss Tinley, and Catherine accidentally ditches her. Catherine was extremely upset with him and pleaded for him to let her out, but it was obvious that the Tropes did not care at all. With the developments of Catherine’s newer relationships, you can see how manipulative Isabella and her family actually are. Most signs of the female gothic are in this story, they just aren’t as dramatic. I actually quite like how the stereotypes are different because it makes this story interesting, and easier to read. You can also identify these characters’ personalities to modern-day people, which to me makes a better connection to the book since you can relate to it.
I personally was interested by how curious Catherine was about General Tilney in the last portion of the book. I think that she was almost so desperate to be living in a gothic novel, that she tried to make a villain out of General Tilney. While reading the novel I personally thought that General Tilney seemed to be nice, maybe a bit odd, but not much more than anyone else in the story. However, Catherine was always trying to find out a secret about him. For example, during the dinner they shared, and the walk through Northanger Abby that she and Eleanor shared with the General, Catherine was very suspicious and tried to imagine him as a sort of gothic villain. I think that Henry telling her that her imagination had gotten the best of her snapped her into reality, and she realized that she really had been imagining most of his villainous ways.
Iva Jankovic’s analysis of Northanger Abbey stood out to me because I agree with the changes Catherine undergoes in this book. At the start of the novel, Catherine is seen as this romantic young girl who is slightly naive. She is described as a tomboy who rolls in the dirt and plays sports, but in this era, the characters see this as silly, stupid, and boring, instead of a normal youthful child curious of the world around her. This transitions into the second change Catherine undergoes because she is forced to face reality by being molded from the “social outside” into the “standards” of society. Catherine is taken to Bath where she is made into this acceptable eighteenth-century woman worthy of an engagement. I believe, these transitions based on conformity make her somewhat of a zombie compared to who she might have become without the expectations of women in this time period.
I find the analysis by Jankovic interesting, especially the second observation. I have never considered that Catherine, by the end of the novel, has conformed in many ways. She goes from being a tomboy who rolls down hills and plays baseball to a full society lady. However, I don’t think it is fair to call her a zombie. It is not easy to reject the norm and not conform, especially in the 1800’s. It was a much more strict and proper time. Women had to marry a man, because there were few ways for them to make money other than this. Plus, non-conforming women historically are not tolerated. From the story of Adam and Eve to the witch trials, it can be deadly to not conform into what society wants. Everyone conforms in some ways. Just because she did what was expected in society for her time doesn’t make her a zombie, just human.
In regards to the last question, if Catherine starts out as a zombie or if she becomes one, I would have to agree with the latter. We’re told in the beginning how plain and unremarkable Catherine is and has always been. How she was a tomboy as a child, and had no real distinction to her. We’re led to believe from the get-go that she is boring, I personally think she’s anything but. This might just be my personal taste in characters, but I love her naivety (no matter how much it hurts to watch sometimes), I feel like she has this sort of youthful wonder and curiosity to her that goes unappreciated because those traits at the time were just viewed as stupid and/or silly. Of course I think it is also great that she developed some more rational thinking skills, as that is necessary for everyone, but I truly think she actually had some character to her that set her apart from the rest. I enjoy the fact that she isn’t as “civilized” and traditional as the other female characters, I just hate the way she is treated because of her differences. I believe that the narrator telling us all of these negative things about her is biased, as they are a part of this general society that wants her to conform, so she finally does and becomes a “zombie.”
Curious and impressionable is how one could describe Catherine Morland. As a young woman living in an era of judgement and reprobation, she knowingly keeps her intelligence, or lack thereof, to herself. She finds great pleasure, however, in submerging herself into the mystic wonders of a good novel, a character trait that Henry Tilney seems to capitalize on.
With great confidence and a high ego, Henry Tilney ropes Cathrine into an elaborate and descriptive experience like that of the experiences from Cathrine’s novels. Whether knowingly or not, Henry and Cathrine’s exchange planted a seed of excitement into Cathrine’s head that there is more mystery to this Abbey then what’s presented.
One could argue that Henry is completely responsible for the fault of Catherine’s imagination. Without the implication of any mystery within the Abbey, Cathrine would never have thought it. Henry knows and has pointed out the curiosity of Cathrine, suggesting that he very well knew she was going to assume realness in his story. Also, reading is one of the only categories of life that Cathrine feels well versed and knowledgeable. One can assume she only desperately wanted a type of comparison from her life to the life of those in her fascinating novels.
Catherine Morland is not the brightest girl, and her perceptions of people are not the best. She doesn’t recognize the motivations of the people around her, especially motivations that involve money. It’s something she almost seems to gloss over, which is interesting, because her family is not perfectly wealthy. It would be in her best interest to marry someone with money, someone who could elevate her social standing, but none of that occurs to her, and it’s not something she really notices in Henry. She doesn’t recognize Isabella’s infatuation with marrying a wealthy man. She doesn’t notice that General Tilney thinks fondly of her at first, because he has mistaken her for being wealthy (granted I’m not sure Eleanor or Henry noticed until the very end of the novel either). I mean to say that there might not be so much real evil in the world of Northanger Abbey as there are poor intentions. Catherine’s search of the gothic evil reveal that her fantasies are just that, and she fails to recognize until the end of the novel, when her naivety as a flaw has only just become a little overcome, that the real ‘evils’ of the world are those that ‘play the game’ or lie and cheat for some sort of wealth. Isabella and General Tilney are not people who I would consider evil, but definitely had morally repugnant intentions, such as Isabella with James and Captain Tilney, and General Tilney with Catherine.
While reading the analysis written by Jankovic, I’m specifically interested in her first take on the changes that Catherine goes through. Northanger Abbey is well known for constantly mocking the Gothic while still following many of the key tropes of the Gothic. Catherine is still a young girl controlled by some sort of male villain. I agree with the idea that Catherine starts off as a romantic character, a smart young girl who is also very naïve. Catherine originally wasn’t a good judge of character and was clueless to the harsh truths around her. Over time she picks up on manipulation and the bad in the world, especially from characters like Isabella. She goes from seeing the romantic aspects of the world to being more realistic. You could say she turned into a zombie because she would now be cynical, but you could also argue the opposite because in the beginning she was more lost in the world.