I read this novel first when I was in my school days, and I formed a very poor impression of it. But recently, I read it again, and many things that I had missed then, appeared more clearly in this read. The clear-cut characters, the satire on ordinary novel-writing, and the wonderfully portrayed falsehood of some of the characters, anyway, I really enjoyed the novel this time.
Catherine Morland, the central character, is an innocent, easily influenced, young girl, who comes to Bath from the country for the first time with her friends, the Allens. Here she meets, for the first time, a wider variety of characters than she ever has met in her country life. She is deceived by the shallow Isabella Thorpe and her family, and in fact cannot believe her own judgement of John Thorpe as a ’’disagreeable man’’. She also meets Henry Tilney (the man who first asks her to dance and whom she promptly falls in love with) and his family, and is then invited by them to stay with them at their home, Northanger Abbey.
The rest of the story describes Catherine’s experiences at Northanger, and how she commits the folly one can be led to by reading too many novels with little experience of actual human life. And as in all Jane Austen novels, through various unexpected happenings and in spite of the interference of the eccentric General Tilney, everything ends well with the lovers getting united.
The portrayal of Isabella Thorpe gave me quite a few laughs. The inconsistency of her talking as well as her writing is really exaggerated and humorous.
I think the novel is really worth a read, if not for the story, at least for the characters.