Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey explores the joys (and sorrows) of friendship. The first major friendship in the novel is between two families: the Allens and the Morlands. This connection leads to the Allens inviting Catherine on a trip to Bath. The story also explores friendship between individuals like Catherine and Isabella. In Volume 1, Chapter 4, they meet in the Pump-room (one of the central meeting points in Bath):

[Catherine] was soon invited to accept an arm of the eldest Miss Thorpe, and take a turn with her about the room. Catherine was delighted with this extension of her Bath acquaintance, and almost forgot Mr. Tilney while she talked to Miss Thorpe. Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love[...]. Miss Thorpe, however, being four years older than Miss Morland, and at least four years better informed, had a very decided advantage in discussing such points; she could compare the balls of Bath with those of Tunbridge[...].

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Austen's social satires often emphasize the follies of marriage. In Northanger Abbey, she expresses her view of marriage through the character of Henry Tilney, who (in Volume 1, Chapter 10) uses dancing as a metaphor for matrimony:

And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. [...] You will allow, that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty[...] and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbours, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else.

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