Jane Austen was surely teasing when in her ‘Advertisement’ she called Northanger Abbey a ‘little work’. On the face of it, this story, like so many stories, like so many of Jane Austen's stories, tells of a young girl's entrance into the world, her achievement of some kind of intellectual maturity, and her marriage to a man entirely suitable for her. The tale seems slight, parodic, of interest only to females, and therefore to be dismissed as trivial. For some, only the facility and accuracy save the day. It is well done, certainly, but was it worth doing at all?

But the tale may be told another way, like this. Catherine Morland, though ignorant, and assailed by corrupt companions and corrupting reading, develops her own powers of understanding at Bath. Free from the biases of traditional education, she courageously tests her hypothesis that General Tilney is a murderer. She picks her way through falsehood and hypocrisy until she proves herself rational, able to know true from false. Her pursuit after happiness, the proper aim of any reasonable being, is fulfilled in the perfect felicity of her marriage. This book shows a mind educating itself through innate powers.

If this sounds familiar, it is, for Northanger Abbey is, l believe, a close realisation of ideas from John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, while Catherine's education derives from his influential treatise.