The introduction to the edition I'm reading (Broadview Literary Critical Edition) calls this novel the most 'overtly literary' of all JA's books, and suggests that almost everything is a reference to some work of literature or other.

This line and what follows early in the first chapter, for example, is a reference to particular novels.

For example, Belinda Portman, the title character in Maria Edgeworth's Belinda (one of the novels mentioned in the 'defense of the novel' a bit later in this week's reading) is described as being:
"undesigning, and more free from affectation and coquetry," as well as "handsome, graceful, sprightly, and highly accomplished;" and "she had been educated chiefly in the country; she had early been inspired with a taste for domestic pleasures; she was fond of reading, and disposed to conduct herself with prudence and integrity."

The novel also makes frequent references to how a heroine is and is not supposed to act, as though there were some universally acknowledged set of 'rules' for them:

Lady Delacour tells Belinda:

"... if you would only open your eyes, which heroines make it a principle never to do—or else there would be an end of the novel—if you would only open your eyes, you would see that this man is in love with you"

and

"My dear miss Portman, you will put a stop to a number of charming stories by this prudence of yours—a romance called the Mysterious Boudoir, of nine volumes at least, might be written on this subject, if you would only condescend to act like almost all other heroines, that is to say, without common sense."

I think that we are meant to understand that Jane Austen approved of Belinda, even though she has the natural beauty, grace, and taste that Catherine apparently lacks, and seeks to act as unlike a heroine as she can.

On the other hand, JA seems to disapprove of the novel Tom Jones and the author Henry Fielding (noted by her brother in the biographical notice that comes with the novel). These early reference to how Catherine is unlike a heroine also make particular reference to that book. JA writes that Catherine, among other things, was not partial to the 'more heroic enjoyments of infancy' which include "feeding a canary-bird".

This is how Sophia Western, the heroine in Tom Jones, is described:

Tom Jones, when very young, had presented Sophia with a little bird, which he had taken from the nest, had nursed up, and taught to sing.

Of this bird, Sophia, then about thirteen years old, was so extremely fond, that her chief business was to feed and tend it, and her chief pleasure to play with it. By these means little Tommy, for so the bird was called, was become so tame, that it would feed out of the hand of its mistress, would perch upon the finger...