Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a story about a young woman named Catherine Morland and how her love for gothic fiction leads to her imagining stories and murders where they are none. It is a biting, amusing satire of gothic fiction from Austen that also reckons with themes of class and family, and uses strong imagery and language to immerse readers into the mindset of an upper-middle class family in Bath. These themes are excellently explored in Chapter 7 of the novel, in a scene where Catherine and her friend Isabella Thorpe are in downtown meeting Catherine’s brother James.

The central themes of the passage lay out the themes of class inequality and wealth in the novel, as well as embody Austen’s use of satirical language to comment upon society. She begins the passage by describing the setting: the intersection of “Cheap-street” and “Union-passage,” both of which are ironic names. For example, Cheap-street is populated by the lower class and looked down upon in the narrative, and Austen points this out in a way that perhaps critiques social conventions that separate the lower and upper classes. She even describes the street as “impertinent,” personifying Cheap-street and embodying it with the same expectations as the “impertinent” lower classes. This demonstrates a classic characteristic of Austen’s stories: using satire to make commentary on society. In this case, she uses exaggerated, on-the-nose language to make commentary on class.

The way she describes them is personal and deeply relates to her own experiences living in Bath, stating how it is “so unfortunately connected with the great London and Oxford roads, and the principal inn of the city” in a way that perhaps reveals Austen’s own gripes with the area. The details are ones that would not be known without personal experience in Bath, thus making the novel feel more realistic and helping readers who might be from Bath to relate to the novel. Strong language such as “scampered up”, “jumped out”, and “driven along the bad pavement” all create a dynamic and frantic atmosphere that convey a sense of urgency and chaos. This is intensified by the phrase “threading the gutters,” which not only evokes the imagery of dirty sewers and low-class, poverty-ridden areas, but creates the image of movement through a crowded and difficult area. Through a few short phrases, Austen brings the city of Bath to life and directly portrays how the Morlands and Thorpe’s upper-middle class upbringing influences the way they view simple traffic. Austen demonstrates a mastery of language with her dynamic, sensational imagery.

Further, by bringing Bath to life, Austen mirrors the urban, chaotic nature of Bath with the confusing whirlwind of relationships and strife that will take place in the book. The whirlwind of the city is reflected in the whirlwind of the plot, making Bath the perfect backdrop for the character’s experiences. Bath was further a growing city, which again mirrors how the girls are growing out of their youth and into adulthood, and how it can be a trying, confusing time. This connects some of the more abstract concepts of the book—growing up and finding love—to a concrete mirror like Bath. As Bath matures, so too do Catherine and Isabella.

The class difference is further emphasized by the girl’s reaction to the traffic—their original annoyance is expressed by Isabella with the phrase “Oh, these odious gigs… how I detest them,” but she quickly changes her mind when she realizes that the gig in question holds James Morland and Isabella’s brother. She notices them and immediately exclaims “delightful!” Austen employs irony here to demonstrate that the women’s annoyance, “though so just,” only lasts for as long as they believe that it is the lower classes causing such chaos and ruckus. The moment they realize that the cause is their own brothers, they are excited and have no problem. In their minds, it is alright to cause chaos or confusion if it is them doing so, but the lower classes do not have the same rights. It is a very subtle classism Austen depicts here, and the dialogue highlights how trivial the concerns of the girls are compared to the worries of everyday people.

Apart from classism, Austen uses exaggerated language to shine a light on societal expectations for women. Her exaggerated language when describing Catherine and James’ greeting one another, with words such as “liveliest,” “amiable,” “sincerely,” and “satisfaction” are combined to create almost a pantomime of a greeting to one another. Her punctuation is rife with exclamation points that add extra weight to what should be casual greetings. Society expects women to be cheerful and wonderful sisters and wives, and we see here Catherine almost performing the act of a perfect sister. Austen uses satire of human behavior again in the paragraph when she writes “whether in quest of pasty, millinery, or even (as in the present case) of young men.” It uses metaphor to compare men to food, and puts the two at equal levels in terms of fulfillment for young women. It is almost as though women are just doing what is expected of them to survive in society: breathe, blink, eat, find a husband. It also gives context to Catherine’s gothic escapades later in the book when she acts out the role of the gothic heroine in a satirical manner, only to realize there was no mystery all along. This performance of what is expected of her is one that all women do, according to Austen: Catherine simply is taking inspiration from the wrong place.

Austen’s dialogue in the passage helps to characterize Catherine, Isabella, and James clearly. Isabella’s quick turn from annoyance to delight at the realization that the gig holds James and her brother reveals her capricious, fickle nature. Catherine’s inability to read James’ attraction for Isabella demonstrates her innocence and naivety, which Austen states she could have noticed “had she been more expert in the development of other people’s feelings, and less simply engrossed by her own.” James’ “mixture of joy and embarrassment” at greeting Isabella indicates his interest in her, an important plot point in the book that will ultimately clash with Isabella’s fickle nature. Austen’s swift characterization of all three characters foreshadows what will occur later in the novel, as Catherine’s naivety leads to her believing there to be a gothic mystery where there is none, and Isabella’s fickle nature will ultimately destroy the relationship between her and James. It further shows why Catherine is the protagonist—because many readers will be able to relate to her naivety and grow with her—while Isabella is juxtaposed against Catherine to demonstrate an example of what a young lady should not be.

Ultimately, this passage is a ripe demonstration of Austen’s mastery of the English language to portray complicated themes of class tension and flesh out her characters in only a few short paragraphs. This is hardly the densest paragraph she writes, yet it is laden with metaphors, imagery, foreshadowing, and irony, all of which help set the reader within the gothic satire that is Northanger Abbey. This analysis just highlights the complexity of Austen’s work and reveals why she remains a popular author to this day.