103 pages • 3 hours read
Jane AustenA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
The novel opens with the comment that “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine.” How does this opening line set the stage for important elements of plot, characterization, and theme?
Teaching Suggestion: Austen’s opening lines are justifiably famous, as she so often manages to use them to encapsulate the novel that will follow. This prompt asks students to analyze exactly how she does this in the case of Northanger Abbey. Because there are multiple effective ways to answer this prompt, a whole-class discussion may not elicit the same creative and flexible thinking that individual answers or small-group discussion will elicit; ideally, a whole-class discussion would take place to compare answers after individuals write or small groups discuss.
Differentiation Suggestion: Students with limited abstract thought may protest that there is no relationship between one brief sentence and the plot, characterization, and themes of an entire novel.
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