Jane Austen took great pains to point out to us how very unheroine-like Catherine was in Bath; she didn't react as a heroine would to any number of situations, she was disingenuous and took things at face value.

Now we get to Northanger Abbey and suddenly Catherine is showing all the signs of a literary heroine - forebodings, wild imaginings, etc.

Catherine was "artless" in Bath, easily deceived by others. At Northanger Abbey she is "artful" deceiving herself. She had been making progress in Bath, beginning to observe and think and reason things out for herself. She gets to Northanger Abbey and surrenders her reasoning powers to that of being a novel heroine.

While I shake my head and smile at Catherine's "adventures" I also cannot help but be disappointed that her progress to, I don't know - self-knowledge? - is arrested.