Intro
This was the first novel that Jane Austen wrote, and it's all about the trials and tribulations of Catherine Morland, Austen's young heroine. At the start of the novel, Catherine is living a run-of-the-mill life in a small village. However, when a couple of family friends invite her to the city, she jumps at the chance. This opens up a new social life, as she becomes best friends with a girl called Isabella, and the two spend their time going to the hottest social events and raving about the latest literary craze: the Gothic novel, with its mix of horror, intrigue, romance, and spooky settings.
Despite attempts to set her up with Isabella's brother (cue a series of comic misunderstandings), Catherine falls for a guy called Henry Tilney and makes friends with his sister, too. It's no surprise, then, that she agrees to visit their home, Northanger Abbey. Having recently read Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, one of the most popular Gothic novels of its day, Catherine is keen to embark on a Gothic adventure of her own.
Okay, so Catherine gets disappointed pretty quickly when she finds that Northanger Abbey isn't the mysterious Gothic ruin that she had imagined. The imagination is a powerful thing, though, and it's a major reason why literature can be so gripping. Take ghost stories: we may find ourselves more aware of creaking floorboards or the whistling of the wind if we've just read a chilling tale. Once we're in that mind-set, it doesn't always take much to fire up the imagination… and that's what happens to Catherine.
The seeds are planted when Catherine starts to suspect that General Tilney's (that's Henry's dad) strange behavior and mood are due to him having, you know, murdered his wife. She starts snooping around, and of course she uncovers some kind of manuscript and starts picturing the terrible secrets it might conceal. She spends the rest of the night—a dark, stormy night—imagining weird sounds and possible intruders.
When daylight arrives and she reads the manuscript, however, she finds that it's a—drum roll please—laundry list. Austen is pretty much poking fun at the conventions of Gothic novels, including The Mysteries of Udolpho, in which the heroine becomes preoccupied with the grisly sights that may lie beneath a black veil… only to find that all that's really there is a wax statue.
In narratological terms, we'd call this "intertextuality," as Austen references the devices that characterize the Gothic genre. As for Catherine, she finally comes to realize that these novels don't reflect real life.
Quote
Her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what she had with such causeless terror felt and done, nothing could shortly be clearer than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created delusion, each trifling circumstance receiving importance from an imagination resolved on alarm, and everything forced to bend to one purpose by a mind which, before she entered the abbey, had been craving to be frightened. She remembered with what feelings she had prepared for a knowledge of Northanger. She saw that the infatuation had been created, the mischief settled, long before her quitting Bath, and it seemed as if the whole might be traced to the influence of that sort of reading which she had there indulged.
Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and charming even as were the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the Midland counties of England, was to be looked for. Of the Alps and Pyrenees, with their pine forests and their vices, they might give a faithful delineation; and Italy, Switzerland, and the south of France might be as fruitful in horrors as they were there represented. Catherine dared not doubt beyond her own country, and even of that, if hard pressed, would have yielded the northern and western extremities. But in the central part of England there was surely some security for the existence even of a wife not beloved, in the laws of the land, and the manners of the age. Murder was not tolerated, servants were not slaves, and neither poison nor sleeping potions to be procured, like rhubarb, from every druggist. Among the Alps and Pyrenees, perhaps, there were no mixed characters. There, such as were not as spotless as an angel might have the dispositions of a fiend. But in England it was not so; among the English, she believed, in their hearts and habits, there was a general though unequal mixture of good and bad.
Analysis
Catherine has revealed her suspicions to Henry, whose response was only to scold her for thinking such things. Given that Henry had tried to spook Catherine on their way to the Abbey (telling her of the mysterious and chilling sights and sounds awaiting her), we could say that he didn't exactly help matters.
However, Henry is able to tell the difference between fiction and reality, whereas Catherine has lost her sense of perspective and let her imagination run riot. It's only now that the truth hits her, and she realizes that there hasn't been any real reason to suspect the General of such a terrible crime. It's not so much that Austen is criticizing Gothic literature—in fact, she devotes another well-known passage to a defense of it—even though Gothic lit was seen as a trivial form of entertainment at the time. The focus is more on Catherine's confusion of fiction and reality.
Binary oppositions come into play here in that the Gothic tales that Catherine has been reading hinge upon these structures. They're similar to fairy tales in this sense, as they deal in basic characters who are all either good or evil, heroes or villains. There's no in-between ground. What Catherine comes to see is that in reality, people are three-dimensional individuals.
So Austen's novel's totally got a self-aware vibe—in fact, the narrator even becomes an obvious presence at certain points, reminding us that we're reading a novel and referring to plot devices. The whole thing is pretty tongue-in-cheek, and we get the sense that Austen has created it in part as a parody. However, it takes Catherine much longer to catch up.
Catherine's thinking has been shaped by the books that she has been reading, and this taps into wider issues regarding fiction. While it's great to get swept away when reading a good book, it's not so great if we lose touch with reality. These books may be enjoyable, and for all Catherine knows, there might be cultures in which they're a totally true reflection of life. They're not, however, true depictions of life in middle England—it's not like we can just go into any drugstore and pick up poison as though it's a normal, everyday occurrence. Likewise, just because someone isn't an angel doesn't mean that they're a monster.
Catherine's experience at Northanger Abbey has been a steep learning curve, and the novel has a classic character arc in this sense—between the beginning and end of the novel, we've watched the heroine mature.