Characterization in Northanger Abbey: Catherine's Awakening Anonymous College

One’s life is shaped and modified as we grow through the relationships one makes, however little, even daily encounters can drastically change the course of life as a whole. In the blink of an eye, something happens, or rather someone happens to arrive by chance when we least expect it, and we are set on a course we never planned, into a future we never imagined nor thought possible. In Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, it is shown through the main protagonist Catherine Morland how encounters of any sort can change our lives and make us either flourish or lessen as people, and sometimes, it only takes one person to awaken you. Isabella Thorpe was that one relationship that transformed Catherine from a girl to a woman. By the end of the novel, Catherine changes due to her relationship with Isabella as she becomes a more cynical person with less naiveté, she becomes a better judge of character and she is able to focus on and develop more mature and fulfilling relationships.

Catherine Morland is the opposite of the typical heroine one would expect to read about when first opening the novel. In fact, she is described by the author as a very ordinary girl that displays no kind of actual calling or talent: “She never could learn or...