Women are only women when they are beautiful When Austen starts Northanger Abbey she starts by describing the protagonist Catherine Morland. When she is first brought into the world she is just another child to the Morlands, but she is meant for greater things as luck would have it. But at first she must overcome herself and change herself to become a proper heroine for her hero. When the story starts Austen starts by describing her mother and her father showing what position in life she lays which makes it seem like she is just an ordinary girl. Austen goes on to say this by showing the reader her exact position in life with the following : “her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were …show more content…
This shows that everything is against her as Austen also states in the first chapter and when this is stated many readers today could relate her then to many heroines of today. Today there are many heroines with all odds against them and yet they come out strong and still keep fighting. By Austen showing the reader the background of Catherine then she shows the reader her origins and how she may become a heroine. To make matters more interesting she was not the only child she was one of ten children and during Catherines time that was a feat in itself to survive childbirth and endure that pain so many times. When Catherine was born she was expected to be brought up in a proper manner and to behave and act like all of the other children of her time. As she grew older she did not act like the other girls acted and she did not behave as expected which her parents had …show more content…
At this point parents would worry that their child would be a menace to society and illminded. But as Austen puts it: “for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she neither had a bad heart nor a bad temper,was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny;she was moreover noisy and wild,hated confinement and cleanliness and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down green slopes at the back of the house.” (Austen pp 25-27). This shows that still at the age of ten she is still acting more like a boy and less of a girl but she does act like a girl in some instances in the way she is kind and having a kind heart and good temper which are good qualities for a woman at the time. Though as it is said above she still has fun doing things boys love to do and she is not clean and hates being confined which can be related to the youth of today. As we see later in the chapter as Catherine begins to age she puts down her “boy toys” and becomes more in touch with her more feminine qualities. Five years pass before she starts to take into account the finer things in life and when she started to grow into herself in a