Woodston, it is implied, is where Henry is the incumbent local clergyman. The reason, confirmed later, he can still make Northanger half his home, and spend many weeks in Bath, is that he has a curate, a clergyman hired by the incumbent to perform some or all of the work in the parish. Many clergymen hired curates, in part because the abundance of

Catherine listened with astonishment; she knew not how to reconcile two such very different accounts of the same thing; for she had not been brought up to understand the propensities of a rattle, nor to know to how many idle assertions and impudent33 falsehoods the excess of vanity will lead. Her own family were plain matter-of-fact people, who

there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.

Tunbridge actually complemented Bath, because its high season was the summer, the least popular time at Bath.

Although earlier he had indignantly refuted Catherine’s Gothic fantasy, Henry had also admitted that his mother suffered from his father’s temper (a suffering that would be made more acute by the weak social and legal position of a wife in this period). Now it appears that, even with his knowledge of his father’s faults, he had underestimated the

‘For six weeks, I allow Bath is pleasant enough; but beyond that, it is the most tiresome place in the world.’ You would be told so by people of all descriptions, who come regularly every winter, lengthen their six weeks into ten or twelve, and go away at last because they can afford to stay no longer.”

Bows, which are mostly used by men in Austen’s novels, indicate formal manners. Such manners were more common at elite social levels, and the Tilneys are soon shown to be very wealthy; Henry Tilney bows at several points.

But Catherine did not know her own advantages—did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward. In the present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of knowledge; declared that she would give any thing in

A guinea is a coin worth a pound and a shilling, or 11⁄20 pounds. It was often used to name the price of specific items, whereas pounds were used to denote large, round sums of money.