Ch. 1-3

Page numbers from The Annotated Northanger Abbey.  I highly recommend this series of annotated editions, edited and annotated by David M. Shapard, for any Austen fans who want clarification on anything from word usage to geography to the manners of the period.

My Thoughts/Noticings/Ramblings: 

Ch. 1

This is one of my favorite bits of Austen's comedic writing.  This chapter introduces Catherine Morland: the least heroic heroine of all time.  Austen is setting up the contrast between the genre conventions of the romantic heroine, and...Catherine.

Heroines	Catherine
Desperately poor but handsome fathers	Reasonably well-off, plain father
Abused/locked up by parents	Treated just fine by parents
Angry/daffy/ill/dead mothers	Happy, steady, healthy mother
Almost alarmingly beautiful	Totally normal-looking; even plain
Enjoy nurturing tiny, cute animals or lovely plants	Enjoys running around, playing cricket, picking flowers she is not supposed to touch
Uncannily clever and good at everything feminine (learning poetry, playing music, drawing and painting)	Moderately clever at best; easily bored with memorization and music; enjoys drawing but is terrible at it
Fall deeply in love, preferably with a member of the nobility or at least a foundling with a potentially interesting and tragic backstory	By the age of seventeen, had never been in love.

And to add insult to injury, Catherine's heroic journey is brought about by her neighbor's fit of gout!  Nothing noble or tragic there, but hey: a trip to Bath is a trip to Bath!  And Bath is a big deal, especially for small-town Catherine.  Bath was a very popular destination among people who could afford to travel (and who would therefore be eligible friends and possible husbands for Catherine!) so this is a promising start for a young heroine.

Ch. 2

It's important to Austen, it seems, that we don't get the wrong idea about Catherine--she's no flawless heroine, but she's a darn nice kid.  Her education (both formal and informal, as in, exposure to the world) is limited, which is to be expected, but she's got a lot going for her.  Once this is cleared up, we launch right back into the same kind of satire that makes up the first chapter.  Catherine's parents don't fall to pieces when she leaves home, nor do they give her lavish gifts--they tell her to dress warmly when it's cold and give her a nice bit of pocket money.  Her travels are safe and uneventful (here Austen's narrator seems to turn to us and shrug: "No inciting events to be seen!  What do you want from me?") and her traveling companion and chaperone Mrs. Allen is thoroughly dull and fashion-obsessed (not at all the type to imperil Catherine's virtue or leave her on the streets to starve, as one might expect in a certain type of novel.)  Catherine's first big outing is kind of a bust since she and Mrs. Allen don't know anyone, but Catherine overhears a couple of guys calling her pretty and that makes her night (although of course a TRUE heroine would hold out for heaps of praise, preferable in the form of elaborate poetry.)



Ch. 3

Thank heavens for the Master of Ceremonies, or poor Catherine would be enduring yet another day of "Boy, I sure wish we knew someone here!  We sure don't know any of these people, not-a-one!"  Instead, she is introduced to snarky stranger Henry Tilney, who shares a satirical wit with our narrator.  Shortly into his first conversation with Catherine, he cuts himself off and announces (with mock horror) that he hasn't asked her any of the expected questions yet!  He rattles through them, one after another, and Catherine knows it's funny and giggle through it, but doesn't quite understand why (a feeling I remember well from growing up, especially when hanging around interesting guys.)

Mr. Tilney continues to be a strange dude, first telling Catherine he knows precisely what she will write in her diary, then setting up and knocking down the notion that women are better letter-writers than men, then having a lengthy and detailed conversation about fabric and dressmaking with Mrs. Allen (just the way to win her over!).  Finally, he gets Catherine to refuse to tell him what she's thinking (it's that he might be too into making fun of people) and then assures her that, now that he has something to bug her about, they'll be well-acquainted in no time!  (Charmed, I'm sure, Mr. Tilney.)

My Takeaways: 

Poor simple Catherine is caught in a double dose of satire in these opening chapters.  The narrator is constantly comparing her to Real Heroines (and finding her sadly lacking, which is to say, normal!) and Mr. Tilney is poking fun at every social convention Catherine has been taught to obey!  She rolls with everything as gamely as possible, but it feels like she may be in over her head here.

Vocab Notes/Clarifications:

Ch. 1

In case you're curious: "The Beggar's Petition" and "The Hare and Many Friends".  Catherine memorizes the second much more easily--and who can blame her?  "The Hare and Many Friends" is a shorter poem retelling a fable about a bunch of animals; "The Beggar's Petition" is a lengthy meditation on the life of a peasant and the circumstances that brought him low. (Remember: this is when Catherine is a child!) (p. 10)

vicissitudes (p. 16)--literally, the word means a change of fortunes, or a contrast; here, Austen continues to play with genre conventions when she says that Catherine was starting to be interested in books--especially poetry--that would prepared her for the dramatic events that would surely befall her as a romantic heroine.

sensibility (p. 18)--when Austen uses this word, she is talking about emotions, or the ability to feel great emotion.  This, too, was a common quality of romantic heroines--they felt everything SO MUCH.  This extended to art, nature--beauty of any kind, really.  They just had ALL THE FEELS, ALL THE TIME.  (The idea here is sort of like The Princess and the Pea--a real heroine would feel EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING, but Catherine is sadly lacking because she is not pining away for someone or mindlessly sketching perfect likenesses of her SECRET CRUSH GUY on every wall.  This is more skewering of genre conventions.)

Ch. 2

Upper Rooms (p. 36)--
Bath is a resort town, and the Upper Rooms (as well as the Lower Rooms, or as either might be called, the Assembly rooms) are like the club, but the whole family goes because young ladies needed chaperones and also once you've seen the play and the concert, what are you going to do, really?  But you paid to get in and there was dancing and eating and cards with everyone else in town.  Generally, people didn't just start chatting each other up, either; introductions were important, so you had to at least have an acquaintance in common. 
 
chair (p. 44)--When it says that Catherine "went to her chair", she means one of these:

This is how people traveled in Bath.  It was popular partly because Bath was a destination for invalids (who came to "take the waters" and be healed) and partly because the streets in the older parts of Bath were too narrow to easily navigate by carriage.

Ch. 3

fag (p. 56)--If you've had me as a teacher you've heard me shut somebody down for using this word.  In this context, though, it just means a tiring activity; you may also see "I was so fagged" for "I was worn out."  To the best of my knowledge this is both British and outdated, so it still doesn't fly in my classroom in 21st century America!