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Northanger Abbey, and she notices that he omits to open certain doors, the tension mounts. Not only that, but when his daughter attempts to open the doors to her late mother’s bedroom, he stops her. This leads Catherine to jump to the conclusion that the General had been cruel to his wife during her lifetime, and that he was now concealing something. When Catherine learns that the General would often pace the drawing room for an hour at a time, ‘in silent thoughtfulness’, she feels that this too ‘boded nothing good’. She decides to investigate for herself, but opens the door to Henry Tilney’s bedroom by mistake.
    When Henry realises that Catherine suspects his father, the General, of having murdered his mother, he tells her that she has ‘erred in supposing him [the General] not [to be] attached to his wife, when in fact, he loved her’. Catherine realises that her feelings 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.
    Catherine becomes totally disillusioned with Mrs Radcliffe’s novels portraying vice, horror, murder, slavery and poisoning. They might be appropriate for the continent of Europe, she decides, but they definitely were not appropriate for England. For had not Henry Tilney told her, ‘Remember that we are English, that we are Christians’?
    Catherine’s thoughts turn to Isabella Thorpe. She cannot understand why Isabella, whom she previously considered to be a friend, has failed to write to her, even though she repeatedlypromised to do so. Catherine finally concludes that Isabella is ‘a vain coquette’ whom she believes never had any regard for her, nor for her (Catherine’s) brother James, with whom she had broken off an engagement in the hope of finding somebody richer and more aristocratic.
    When General Tilney finally ejects Catherine from Northanger Abbey, it is not on account of her inquisitiveness. It is because, having seen her as a prospective bride for his son Henry, he had subsequently discovered that she was ‘less rich than he had supposed her to be’ – something which was entirely unacceptable for a prospective daughter-in-law of his. Nevertheless, Henry proposes to Catherine and she accepts him. Finally, all ends happily when the General relents and gives his consent for the couple to marry, but only after learning that Catherine is to have the sum of £ 3,000.
     
    Northanger Abbey is a cautionary tale about an impressionable young lady who allows her imagination to get the better of her. This is largely because she has read too many Gothic novels – of the type which Jane Austen clearly considered to be absurd and ridiculous. Does this mean that Jane herself was lacking in romantic feelings? By no means, as the tears she shed for the loss of her lover Tom Lefroy, clearly demonstrate. Also, let it be remembered that at the conclusion of Northanger Abbey , her heroine Catherine Morland succeeds in marrying her knight in shining armour, Henry Tilney.
    Having thoroughly debunked the Gothic novel in Northanger Abbey , the question became, what kind of novel would Jane write next?
    Notes
    1.­ J.M. Evans, Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey, p. 10.

15
The Watsons
    During her time in Bath, Jane’s writing of novels came to a virtual standstill, possibly because the fullness of her social life left her precious little time for this pastime, and also because she had been uprooted from her beloved Steventon to a place in which she did not feel entirely happy. However, according to Fanny Lefroy, her brother James’s granddaughter, one novel which Jane did commence in Bath, ‘somewhere in 1804’, was The Watsons . 1 The work was left unfinished, possibly because of the death of her father on 21 January 1805. (In fact, The Watsons was not published until 1871 by