My Favorite Jane Austen Scene by Laurel Ann Nattress

2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth—a moment for both celebration and reflection. Two and a half centuries later, her world still captivates. Austen’s wit, her enduring characters, and her quietly subversive storytelling continue to enchant readers, inspiring passionate devotion not just to The Six but to the many adaptations, retellings, and tributes her work has sparked. From bookshelves to film screens to pilgrimages across the English countryside, her legacy thrives.

But what is it about her writing that still resonates?

I’ve invited some of my favorite Austen writers, readers, and scholars to explore the scenes that linger—the ones that sparkle, ache, or haunt. Over the next year, together, we’ll revisit these unforgettable moments, one cherished glimpse of Austen’s genius at a time.

This month, I welcome Laurel Ann Nattress, acclaimed editor and founder of Austenprose.com,

who shares her favorite scene, deftly defining the storytelling beats and why it still strikes a chord with her today. —Christina Boyd

"Insights into My Favorite Jane Austen Scene in Northanger Abbey, from a Voluntary Spy!"

by Laurel Ann Nattress

Have I surprised you by revealing that my favorite scene in a Jane Austen novel is from Northanger Abbey?

As one of Austen’s less well-known and under-valued works, it’s understandable. Written in her youth in 1798 or 1799 (as recalled by her sister Cassandra after Jane’s death), it was the first novel she sold to a publisher, yet the last to be published posthumously in 1817. Its long publication journey is another story, but today I will share why the “…neighbourhood of voluntary spies…” scene makes this novel a treasure and Austen a genius.

Spoilers ahead. Fair warning to anyone who has not read the novel!

SET UP

Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey’s young and naïve heroine, is so addicted to Gothic fiction that she sees “murderous deeds” and evil in every person, place, and situation in which she is placed. Henry Tilney, our charming, stalwart hero, teases her to heighten her imagination, resulting in her visit to his ancient ancestral home of Northanger Abbey, akin to one of the melodramatic, fantastical fiction novels she consumes.

PRIVY TO FOLLY

She has convinced herself that Henry’s mother met her early demise by imprisonment and wanton cruelty by his father. Determined to discover the truth, she sneaks into Mrs. Tilney’s bed chamber in hopes of unraveling the mystery. Instead, she finds nothing odd or amiss and is sorely disappointed.

She was sick of exploring, and desired but to be safe in her own room, with her own heart only privy to its folly; and she was on the point of retreating as softly as she had entered, when the sound of footsteps, she could hardly tell where, made her pause and tremble…

Austen brilliantly continues to build tension and fear for the heroine and the reader in line with the Gothic fiction she was parodying.

She had no power to move. With a feeling of terror not very definable, she fixed her eyes on the staircase, and in a few moments it gave Henry to her view. “Mr. Tilney!” she exclaimed in a voice of more than common astonishment. He looked astonished too. “Good God!” she continued, not attending to his address. “How came you here? How came you up that staircase?"

“How came I up that staircase!” he replied, greatly surprised. “Because it is my nearest way from the stable–yard to my own chamber; and why should I not come up it?”

DREADFUL SUSPICIONS

LOL! Austen gives us a harrowing climax by terrifying her heroine—and then relief with an anti-climax when she meets the least frightening person she could possibly encounter, Henry. (It never fails to make me laugh.)

He is as astonished as she is at their meeting. What transpires is my favorite dialogue between them in the novel. She has been snooping about, and he knows it. She tries to explain but only digs herself deeper into trouble when she reveals her reasons. Instead of laughing at her (and it does all sound unbelievably presumptuous and naïve), he firmly questions her.

“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to – Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?”

The illustration of Henry Tilney (he looks like Elvis entering the building) taking Catherine by surprise as he ascends the staircase is from the 1833 edition of Northanger Abbey created by Ferdinand Pickering for the Bentley Standard Novels edition.

HENRY KNOWS BEST

Indeed! This is a stinging blow to our poor Catherine, who previously admitted that Henry always knows best! She just forgot to use the Henry meter of good taste and proper deportment before she went a bit Gothic crazy on him after his three-day absence from the abbey!

“They had reached the end of the gallery, and with tears of shame she ran off to her own room.”

THROWING OUR HEROINE OFF A CLIFF

Austen has been building character and plot to this important point in the story. It is Catherine’s “all is lost moment.” What will her reaction be? Can she work through it and move forward? Is her budding romance with Henry ruined? Will Henry tell his father that he caught her snooping in unforbidden rooms in the abbey? And…reveal that she thought General Tilney had killed his wife through cruelty and neglect?

So many unanswered questions.

This scene is a masterclass in building drama, heightening tension, and then throwing your heroine off a cliff!

INTROSPECTION AND SELF-DISCOVERY

Austen’s brilliance in story composition aside, I love this scene because of Henry’s final speech. He has been presented throughout the novel as a charming, approachable character with a deep sense of wit and sensitivity. By questioning our heroine,

“Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained.”

She must search her soul, reevaluate her behavior, accept her faults, learn from them, and hope for the future.

Will we get the big character arc that Catherine deserves? I fear, dear reader, that only Austen can reveal the complete answer.

Laurel Ann Nattress, editor, author, blogger

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Since 2007, Laurel Ann Nattress has been the creator & editor of Austenprose.com, a blog devoted to the oeuvre and influence of her favorite author, Jane Austen. She is also the editor of Jane Austen Made Me Do It, a short story anthology published in 2011 by Ballantine Books.

A life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, Laurel Ann has been a contributor to the Jane Austen Centre online magazine, Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine, and Masterpiece PBS. Professionally, she runs Austenprose PR, a curated online marketing service for authors and publishers.

An expatriate of southern California, Laurel Ann lives in a one-hundred-year-old craftsman cottage surrounded by roses and hydrangeas in Spokane, Washington. Follow her on X and Instagram as Austenprose, and visit her on Facebook as Austenprose.com.

Notes on the film adaptations:

This important scene is handled very differently in the two films.

Northanger Abbey (1986) – the dialogue in this adaptation is much closer to Austen’s original, and we get the full “neighborhood of voluntary spies” speech by Henry to Catherine.

Northanger Abbey (2007) with a screenplay by Andrew Davies of Pride and Prejudice (1995) fame. The scene from the novel is included…but…Henry’s “neighbourhood of voluntary spies” speech has been removed altogether. [gasp] So clueless, Andy!