Northanger Abbey: Volume 2, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Catherine is happy to learn that the Allens intend to stay at least another three weeks in Bath. The fact of her brother’s engagement has shown her how quickly an engagement can come about, but she hardly thinks of more than the pleasure of seeing Henry Tilney sometimes and speculates very little about the future. She joyfully tells Eleanor Tilney that they will be staying, only to receive the news that General Tilney wishes to leave Bath in one week. Catherine is disappointed, but at that very moment the General enters and asks if Eleanor has yet made her request. Eleanor says she has not, and the General asks if he could be so bold as to ask Catherine to come and spend some time with Eleanor at their home, Northanger Abbey. He makes a long speech saying how honored he would be to host her, despite their simple mode of life.

Catherine is thrilled, and quickly writes to her parents to get explicit permission to make the trip to Northanger Abbey a certainty. She feels that she is the luckiest person in the world: she has been introduced to new people whom she likes and has succeeded in making them like her too. Isabella will become her sister-in-law, while the Tilneys have gone above and beyond by inviting her to be a guest in their home.

Catherine is thrilled that she will be visiting an abbey, an old building and similar to the setting of the gothic novels she loves. She is almost as excited about the prospect of staying in an abbey as she is about spending more time with Henry Tilney. She hopes that she will learn that the building was the scene of some story fit for a gothic novel, and marvels at how little the Tilneys think about what a marvelous place they call home. Although she asks Miss Tilney many questions about the abbey, Catherine is too excited to process what she hears.