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Northanger Abbey

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But when a young lady is to be an heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to through a hero in her way.

I haven't read Northanger Abbey since I was between 10 and 12. Subsequently, I don't remember much of it. Northanger Abbey and Lady Susan are the only Austen books I haven't re-read at least twice. So when I got this beautiful bonded leather copy of all seven Jane Austen novels, I quickly started on Northanger Abbey.

The heroine of our story is Catherine Morland, who was an ugly child that developed into an almost pretty young woman. When Catherine is seventeen, she accompanies Mrs. Allen, a rather silly, stupid woman, to Bath for a six week stay. When they arrive at Bath, Mrs. Allen constantly laments that they have no acquaintances there, to Catherine's horror. She therefore spends the first week without meeting a single acquaintance. …show more content…

When she finally meets a man, Mr. Henry Tilney, she promptly falls for him. She also meets Isabella Thorpe, a girl who is much more interested in securing Catherine's brother's affections than in Catherine herself. Poor Catherine is completely blind to that, though.

The week before the Tilney's plan to leave Bath, Eleanor Tilney, Henry's sister, invites Catherine to come home to Northanger Abbey with them. Catherine, hoping to receive a proposal from Henry, eagerly accepts.

Catherine is a lover of gothic novels, and she imagines Northanger Abbey as an Abbey with secret passageways, legends and ghosts, and a terrible secret for her alone to discover. In actuality, the abbey is comfortable and inviting, but Catherine's imagination gets the best of her.

Catherine, as she crossed the hall, listened to the tempest with sensations of awe; and, when she heard it rage round a corner of the ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door, felt for the first time that she was really in an

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