Northanger Abbey And Persuasion Essay

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One thing that Persuasion and Northanger Abbey have in common is that they both take place primarily in the town of Bath. This is not surprising considering Jane Austen’s ties with the place. She enjoyed social events, and in her youth she often frequented Bath for dances and balls. From the year 1801 to 1806, she took up residence in Bath due to her elderly father’s wish to retire there. Interesting are the very different portrayals of Bath in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion and the very different picture of society that we receive from them both. Catherine Morland speaks with extreme delight of Bath, declaring that “’I really believe I shall always be talking of Bath, when I am at home again—I do like it so very much. . . . Oh! Who can ever …show more content…
Catherine Morland is a free woman who has the time of her life in Bath and fears nothing, because she sees only the good in people and not the bad. For the most part, her idealistic views are validated. She is treated fairly, being neither bullied nor put down, like some of Austen’s later heroines Anne and Fanny. She is equally comfortable with those above her rank as well as those below her, blissfully unaware of the rigid hierarchical society she lived in. Her youthful ideals can be presumed to mirror Jane Austen’s own when she wrote Northanger Abbey at the tender age of twenty three. We can contrast the joy Catherine Morland has for Bath to the clear distaste that Anne Elliot has for Bath, as seen when she “persisted in a very determined, though very silent disinclination for Bath; caught the first dim view of the extensive buildings, smoking in rain, without any wish of seeing them better,” which reflects Austen feelings about the town she had grown to dislike. I believe that Bath stood as a monument to the superficiality that Austen satirizes in
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