Northanger Abbey

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland as a little girl would have guessed that she was born to be a heroine.Her father was a clergyman, not poor and not rich, and her mother was a sensible woman who had already raised several sons before Catherine came along.The family had ten children in all, and Catherine, far from being a beauty, had a plain face, a thin figure, and a strong fondness for boys’ games rather than dolls.

She hated books that only taught lessons, and far preferred rolling down the green slope behind the house to sitting quietly indoors.She showed no interest at all in raising pet birds, growing roses, or drawing pretty pictures, and could never be persuaded to learn music.Indeed, no one who watched her playing cricket with her brothers would have called her anything like a heroine in the making.

But time is often kind, and by fifteen Catherine’s looks had begun to improve; her hair started to curl, and people began to say she was “almost pretty.”At seventeen, she was, on the whole, a pleasant, good-humored girl, with a fresh, healthy look about her.

Better still, her mind, like her looks, was forming for the better: she began to read exactly the kind of books a heroine ought to read.She learned useful little quotations from the poets — lines about disappointed love and a broken heart, which are such a comfort to a young lady in distress.So far, then, she had all the makings of a real heroine.

What she still lacked was any real adventure at all: no lord had fallen in love with her, and no strange old castle had ever crossed her path.Her family, unfortunately, were not the least bit romantic; her father did not keep her locked away, and her mother was very much alive and in excellent health.Catherine’s life, in short, was calm, ordinary, and entirely without incident — hardly the beginning of a proper adventure story.

Then, when Catherine was seventeen, her neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Allen invited her to come with them to Bath, where Mr. Allen hoped the famous waters might help his health.Mrs. Morland, though she loved her daughter dearly, said only a mild goodbye, with none of the tearful warnings a novel-heroine’s mother usually gives.And so, with nothing more dramatic than a full trunk and her parents’ quiet blessing, Catherine Morland set off for Bath — and for whatever adventures, real or imagined, might be waiting there.