In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen presents the reader with a study of moral considerations. Yet beyond that, she illustrates the use of writing as an educational tool. Austen mixes a diversity of fictional elments, including satire, to explore and develop her main character, Catherine Morland. Her 'education' parallels that of the reader. That is, Austen seems aware that Northanger Abbey is about writing itself, and that the complexities and illusions that her characters face are confronted by the reader as well.

The first two chapters are what may be considered the 'gothic' chapters. When examined closely, they seem to explain or warn the reader of the perils of employing one literary device or form to explain events and circumstances. Clearly, Austen is concerned with the education of what may appear to be an 'ordinary' woman. But Austen uses elaborate means and complex literary and fictional events to maintain the realism of her main character. By doing so Austen illustrates that what may appear to be an ordinary situation will require complex means to understand its true intent. Austen is not overtly critical of 'gothic' or supernatural events, but rather illustrates the inherent danger in using one explanation to understand the world. Certainly, Austen uses Catherine to deliberate moral and social situations, but the true value of the novel resides in Austen's ability to show that viewing or explaining the world from only one perspective, whether empiricist, moralist, sentimentalist, or otherwise, is not an appropriate way to 'educate'.