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Northanger Abbey: Northanger Abbey was written in the late 1790s, but published only posthumously. It is the story of a deliberately ordinary heroine named Catherine Morland. The book is divided into two parts. In the first, Catherine travels with family friends, the Allens, to Bath. There she meets two brothersister pairs --- John and Isabella Thorpe, and Henry and Eleanor Tilney. Her own brother, James, joins them and becomes engaged to Isabella. Catherine is attracted to Henry, a clergyman with witty and unorthodox manners.

General Tilney, father to Henry and Eleanor, invites Catherine to visit them at home; this visit makes up the second half of the book. The General is at once solicitous and overbearing. Under the spell of the gothic novel she has been reading, Catherine imagines he has murdered his wife. Henry discovers this and sets her humiliatingly straight.

Catherine receives a letter from James telling her that Isabella has ended their engagement. General Tilney, upon returning from London, has Catherine thrown out, to make her own way home. It is eventually understood that Catherine and James had been mistaken for people of great wealth, but the situation has been clarified.

Henry is so outraged by his father's behavior that he follows immediately after Catherine and proposes marriage. They cannot proceed without his father's permission, but this is finally given in the happy madness of Eleanor's marriage to a viscount. Questions: 1. Catherine Morland is clearly a influenced reader, but her gullibility extends beyond books into the real world. Is the tendency to think the best of people a trait you admire? Is it a trait you have? 2. Catherine is inclined to think the worst is General Tilney. Why is this? 3. Henry, himself, is a controversial hero. Some suggest he's one of Austen's most delightful. Some find him witty and appealingly interested in feminine matters. Others find him condescending and even misogynistic. What do you think? 4. Northanger Abbey is a book about reading. Much of the plot has to do with the irrationality of confusing one's own life with the stuff of fictional adventure. But the book also contains a famous Austen defense of novels and novelists, particularly those read and written by women. We are told immediately that Catherine does not object to books so long as

"nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them" and they are "all story and no reflection.â&#x20AC;? Does escapist fiction have a bad reputation? Why is it necessary? 5. What is the role of fiction in your own life? Why do you read it and what do you get from it?

Download the audiobook here: Watch the TV adaptation: Part 1: Part 2:

Fitxa: Northanger Abbey