As we began exploring last week, Northanger Abbey follows the heroine in training Catherine Morland, a young, unworldy girl obsessed with reading Gothic novels. In the excerpts from Part I, we see her introduction to polite society and, later, in Part II, her visit to a supposedly “Gothic” locale, the titular Northanger Abbey. In the portions of the novel set at Northanger Abbey, Catherine constantly misrecognizes her surroundings, expecting to find herself within a Gothic novel. By the end of the excerpt, Catherine’s “Gothic” flights of fantasy are shattered nd she comes into a more “realistic” consciousness. What are some of the ways we see Catherine’s misrecognition in the excerpts? Does Catherine’s initial naivety and coming into knowledge as a character connect to the “metafictional” aspects of the novel we discussed last week? For the asynchronous assignment, write a few paragraphs reflecting on these questions.

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