Northanger Abbey

The novel opens with the comment that “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine.” How does this opening line set the stage for important elements of plot, characterization, and theme?

• What are the claims being made in this sentence, and how does it establish a satiric tone for the novel that will follow?
• What does this opening line suggest about Catherine as a dynamic character, and how does the novel follow through on this promise?
• What is the relationship between Catherine’s ordinariness and Austen’s critique of Gothic Romanticism?

Teaching Suggestion: Austen’s opening lines are justifiably famous, as she so often manages to use them to encapsulate the novel that will follow. This prompt asks students to analyze exactly how she does this in the case of Northanger Abbey. Because there are multiple effective ways to answer this prompt, a whole-class discussion may not elicit the same creative and flexible thinking that individual answers or small-group discussion will elicit; ideally, a whole-class discussion would take place to compare answers after individuals write or small groups discuss.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with limited abstract thought may protest that there is no relationship between one brief sentence and the plot, characterization, and themes of an entire novel.