Northanger Abbey (1986 film) Northanger Abbey (1986 film) Northanger Abbey is a 1986 made-for-television film adaptation of Jane Austen's novel "Northanger Abbey" (1818), and was originally broadcast on the A&E Network and the BBC in 1987. Northanger Abbey is the story of a young woman, Catherine Morland, who is invited to Bath, Somerset, with family friends, the Allens; they hope the waters at Bath will help Mr. Allen's gout. Catherine (called "Cathy" by her many younger siblings) has been quite sheltered all her life, escaping only by reading Gothic novels, and so is delighted to go to Bath. Mrs. Allen introduces Catherine to the
Northanger Abbey as the preface of Ian McEwan's "Atonement", thus likening the naive mistakes of Austen's Catherine Morland to those of his own character Briony Tallis, who is in a similar position: both characters have very over-active imaginations, which lead to misconceptions that cause distress in the lives of people around them. Both treat their own lives like those of heroines in fantastical works of fiction, with Miss Morland likening herself to a character in a Gothic novel and young Briony Tallis writing her own melodramatic stories and plays with central characters such as "spontaneous Arabella" based on herself. Richard Adams quotes