Topic > Characterization in Northanger Abbey: Catherine's Awakening

A person's life is shaped and changed as we grow through relationships, no matter how small, even everyday encounters can dramatically change the course of life as a whole. In the blink of an eye something happens, or rather someone arrives by chance when we least expect it, and we set off on a route we had never planned, towards a future we never imagined or thought possible. In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, it is shown through the main protagonist Catherine Morland how encounters of any kind can change our lives and make us prosper or diminish as people and sometimes, it only takes one person to wake you up. Isabella Thorpe was that relationship that transformed Catherine from a girl to a woman. At the end of the novel, Catherine changes as a result of her relationship with Isabella as she becomes a more cynical person with less naivety, becomes a better judge of character, and is able to focus and develop more mature and fulfilling relationships. no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Catherine Morland is the opposite of the typical heroine you would expect to read about when opening the novel. In fact, she is described by the author as a very ordinary girl who does not show any kind of true calling or talent: “She could never learn or understand anything before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often careless and occasionally stupid” (Austen 38). She is not particularly beautiful or different, but rather she is kind and thoughtful, and her journey through the novel changes her in a way that slightly distorts her kindness. At the beginning of the novel she is naive and unaware. He has no experience with real-world affairs and topics and chooses instead to forget reality altogether and bury himself in a world of fantasy and make-believe through the books he reads: “Oh! I'm very happy with the book! I would like to spend my whole life reading it" (61). This passage where Catherine meets Isabella in the Pump-room describes her preference for talking about unreal books and stories instead of real-life things, and is what makes her so unaware of anything that exists in her environment. His naivety? and the lack of experience causes her many problems throughout the book and makes her unaware of the hidden schemes and agendas of almost all the other characters such as John Thorpe, James Morland and Isabella Thorpe, and General Tilney. By the end of the novel However, when Catherine understands and begins to see that Isabella has been using her to get closer to her brother, she learns a lot about herself and that the world may not be as pure a place as she had initially thought. In fact, after reading Isabella's letter, she finally discovers her for what she is and is disgusted by it: “He was ashamed of Isabella, and ashamed of having ever loved her” (212). Does the bad end of her relationship with Isabella completely transform the way Catherine sees the world and cause her to lose much of her naivety? which characterizes it at the beginning. Furthermore, Catherine's habit of confusing reality with fiction in her novels prevents her from seeing people's true characters and leads her to misjudge them as she continually dramatizes the people she encounters and their supposed intentions. At Northanger Abbey, for example, instead of taking the opportunity she has to flourish her relationships with both Henry Tilney and Eleanor, she creates these very dramatic and gothic conjectures similar to a gothic novel, and escapes herself by thinking that General Tilney had killed his wife, or was holding her prisoner in his room: “Could that be possible? – Could the father of.