The Girl Who Read Too Much
This is a full Northanger Abbey summary, a plot summary of Jane Austen’s novel, so it spoils everything, the ending included.
Here’s my angle. Catherine Morland guesses all the way through the book, about her friends, about a rich family, and about one very old house. So I kept score. You get the whole story, in order, with a scoreboard of who was right.
The Text
I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number one hundred and twenty one. It has thirty one chapters, plus an advertisement by the authoress and a note on the text. By my count the story itself runs about seventy seven thousand words.
That note says the book was written in seventeen ninety seven and ninety eight, revised around eighteen oh three, and sold to a London publisher who sold it back in eighteen sixteen. The first edition came out in eighteen eighteen, the year after Austen died. That’s from the note, and I don’t add dates of my own.
Bath, Week One
Catherine’s father is a clergyman named Richard, and she is one of ten children. At ten she was plain, wild, and happiest rolling down a hill. At seventeen she is, as the book puts it, in training for a heroine. She has read the right poets, and she has not yet met a hero.
Then Mr. Allen, who owns most of the property around Fullerton, is sent to Bath for his gout, and his wife invites Catherine along. Her mother’s big advice is to keep her throat warm. Her father gives her ten guineas.
At the first ball, in the Upper Rooms, Catherine knows nobody, gets no partner, and yawns. A few days later, in the Lower Rooms, the master of ceremonies introduces a partner called Tilney. He teases her about keeping a journal and about muslin, and she is charmed. Mr. Allen finds out he is a clergyman from a respectable Gloucestershire family. And then Mr. Tilney vanishes.
The Thorpes
Instead, Mrs. Allen runs into an old school friend, Mrs. Thorpe. Mrs. Thorpe has daughters, and the eldest, Isabella, is four years older than Catherine and far more worldly. She also has a son, John, who is at Oxford with Catherine’s eldest brother, James.
Within days Isabella is calling Catherine her dearest creature. They talk about dresses, young men and novels. Catherine is reading The Mysteries of Udolpho, and she can’t put it down.
Then John Thorpe arrives. He talks about his horse and about how much he knows, and he says novels are all nonsense, with two exceptions. Catherine is not impressed. She still gets taken for a drive, and when she gets back, she learns she has missed the Tilneys.
The Rain and the Lie
At the theatre, Catherine meets Henry and his sister, Eleanor, again, and they agree on a walk at twelve the next day. It looks like rain. It rains. They don’t come, and she thinks they’ve snubbed her.
Then John Thorpe turns up with a plan to drive out to Blaize Castle, and says the Tilneys have gone. On the road, Catherine sees Eleanor walking with her brother, and tells Thorpe to stop. He drives on.
The next morning Catherine goes straight to Milsom Street to explain, and by evening she is back in favor. She also meets their father, General Tilney, who is kind to her. When Isabella and John plan another trip, Catherine says no, because she has promised the Tilneys. She holds her ground, and Mr. Allen backs her.
Beechen Cliff
The walk finally happens, round Beechen Cliff. Catherine asks Henry if he reads novels. He says he has read all of Mrs. Radcliffe and finished Udolpho in two days, with his hair on end. She admits that history bores her, with its quarrels of popes and kings and hardly any women. When she calls Udolpho the nicest book in the world, Henry teases her about the word, and she asks why she shouldn’t use it.
That same week, James and Isabella announce they’re engaged. His father agrees, but the income will take two and a half years. Isabella declares she’d happily live on fifty pounds a year.
Soon after, the General invites Catherine to stay at his home, Northanger Abbey. The Allens agree. Catherine, who has dreamed of abbeys, is overjoyed.
Isabella Slips
Before they leave, Isabella starts to drift. Henry’s elder brother, Captain Tilney, arrives in Bath, and Isabella gives him as much attention as she gives James. Catherine notices, and she can’t tell what her friend is doing.
She tells Henry. He says he has told his brother that Isabella is engaged, and he won’t do more. Isabella also claims John Thorpe is in love with Catherine, and that Catherine encouraged him. Catherine says that’s news to her.
Arriving at the Abbey
On the way, Henry has fun with her. He describes the room she’ll be given. Tapestry, a ponderous chest, an ebony cabinet, an ancient housekeeper called Dorothy, and a single lamp. Catherine says that won’t happen to her.
The abbey was a convent before the Reformation, and part of the old building is still there. Her room has wallpaper and a carpet. But in one recess she sees a large high chest.
The Chest and the Cabinet
She gets it open. Inside there is a white cotton counterpane. Then, that night, in a storm, she notices a black and yellow cabinet. After a struggle with the locks she finds a small inner door, and behind it, a roll of paper. Then she snuffs her candle out, and sits in the dark.
In the morning she reads it. It’s an inventory of linen. Shirts, stockings, cravats and waistcoats. A washing bill. One line is about a poultice for a chestnut mare. She is mortified, puts the papers back, and hopes nobody ever finds them.
The General’s Wife
Her imagination isn’t finished. Eleanor says her mother died nine years ago, and that she herself was away when it happened. A portrait of Mrs. Tilney, a monument in church, and the General’s odd habits all add up in Catherine’s head. He must have murdered his wife, or locked her up.
She tries to see the rooms with Eleanor, but the General appears. So she sneaks in alone. It’s a large, sunny bedroom with a dimity bed. Then Henry comes up the stairs and catches her.
He doesn’t laugh. He asks her to think about the country they live in, its laws, and its newspapers, and what she has been imagining. Catherine runs to her room in tears. That is wrong guess number one, and she knows it.
Letters from Bath
James writes to say his engagement is over. Isabella has been playing him against Captain Tilney. Catherine is upset, but Henry and Eleanor are kind.
Then comes a day at Woodston, Henry’s parsonage, a new stone house with a Newfoundland puppy. The General is delighted with everything. Soon after, Isabella writes to Catherine as if nothing happened, asking her to patch things up with James. Catherine doesn’t answer.
Sent Away
Then the General goes to London for a week, and the abbey is happy. Catherine is in her fourth week. Then, late one night, he comes home. Eleanor tells her, pale and upset, that her father has recalled an engagement for the whole family, that Catherine must leave at seven the next morning, and that no servant will go with her.
She travels seventy miles alone, in a hired post chaise, about eleven hours, and arrives home in Fullerton in the evening. Her mother’s first worry is whether she has left anything in the pockets.
Henry Comes
Soon after, Henry turns up at Fullerton, to ask if she got home safely. He explains that the General had been misled. John Thorpe first told him that the Morlands were rich, and that Mr. Allen planned to leave Catherine his estate. When Catherine refused Thorpe, he took it all back.
Henry quarrelled with his father, refused to go to Herefordshire, and offered Catherine his hand. Her parents say yes, if the General agrees. The General does, after his daughter marries a wealthy man, and after he learns Catherine has three thousand pounds. They marry when he is twenty six and she is eighteen.
The Scoreboard
So here’s the score. Catherine was wrong that the Tilneys snubbed her, wrong about Isabella, and wrong that the General killed his wife. She was right that Isabella’s flirting would hurt James, and right that the General was a hard man.
My reading, and it’s an opinion, is that the book isn’t scolding her for reading novels. It’s laughing at the idea that danger looks like a gothic castle. Here, the real villain is money.
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