Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, is a bildungsroman, a coming of age story that focuses on the psychological and maturity of the protagonist Catherine Morland, from youth to adulthood. This essay will analyse the language and narrative techniques of the set passage, and will discuss how this important passage suggests change in Catherine’s overall maturity and her subsequent friendships and relationships, and will conclude by briefly discussing the significance of the passage within the novel’s wider themes.
Northanger Abbey is a consciously designed comedic satirical novel, which breaks the mould of the novel in that it uses other novels to construct an alternative to the kind of novel usually read at the time. Austen could simply have written a gothic, or sentimental novel, but chose not to, and instead parodies them, and undercuts this popular fiction with irony, and satire. The gothic novel, were typically full of fantasy elements, and were hackneyed and repetitive. Whilst Austen wanted to defend the novel, she also wanted to show the ordinariness and the domestic gothic present in everyday life, especially the realities of abuse, and outbursts of violent outbursts, that were part of everyday life for many people, she also wanted to highlight the dangers of novels leading young impressionable girls astray by giving a false picture. Catherine Morland is that impressionable girl, she is sympathetic and naïve and is invited to spend some time away from home at the vulnerable