Northanger Abbey: AS & A2 York Notes

The novel progresses morally and geographically from rural idyll to the anonymous bustle of Bath and the Abbey’s horrors, then finally back to country contentment.

"Northanger Abbey" reveals its formal dynamism as Austen’s writing playfully moves between realism, parody, burlesque, Gothic terror, romance and moral fable.

Isabella’s extravagant professions of undying loyalty and affection, laced with hyperbole, appear comic but they cannot disguise her fundamental dishonesty.

Austen’s third-person narrative allows the reader insight into the intimate psychology of Catherine, as when her exaggerated fears are revealed in her bedchamber at Northanger Abbey.

Austen’s ironic language exposes characters’ follies by assuming that narrator and reader share a moral understanding.