Catherine Morland's immaturity

[kev67]

I am currently reading Northanger Abbey. I have about 70 pages to go. I am slightly worried General Tilney is going to propose to Catherine Morland. I expect she ends up with his clergyman son, Henry. Catherine seems the least mature of all Austen's heroines. She will be married at 17. She seems too young. I imagine she could be dead at 25, or have twelve children by the age of 40, and nobody would be able to imagine what she was like at 17. She does not seem too bright. Henry Tilney appears to ridicule her in one chapter, or maybe two. There was one chapter in which she tells him little children suffer when they are taught to read and write. In another chapter, Henry Tilney teases her by describing Northanger Abbey as a Gothic mansion with secret passages, as in the books she has been reading. I wonder whether their marriage (if they do marry) might turn out like Mr and Mrs Bennet's from Pride and Prejudice.

I thought the book started off fine, but it has taken a dip now that they have left Bath and gone to Northanger Abbey itself.

[Jackson Richardson]

I have to say it is my favourite Jane Austen novel although easily her lightest. I won't give any spoilers, but you have already passed Henry sending up Mrs Radcliffe - this is a wonderful example of a parody which you can enjoy without having read the original. I did read The Mysteries of Udolpho later (and also The Italian) but I didn't need to in order to appreciate NA.

Catherine is immature and unsophisticated but unlike Mrs Bennet she has "a good heart".

Isabella Thorpe is a precursor of Lydia Bennet. As JA got older she doesn't bother with that sort of selfish bimbo in the later novels.

And she never gave a character as gross as John Thorpe again, but he is very funny.

[Danik 2016]

I enjoyed NA more than JA other novels as long as it was a parody. But at some point it becomes similar to the other Austen Novels.

[kev67]

I have to say it is my favourite Jane Austen novel although easily her lightest. I won't give any spoilers, but you have already passed Henry sending up Mrs Radcliffe - this is a wonderful example of a parody which you can enjoy without having read the original. I did read The Mysteries of Udolpho later (and also The Italian) but I didn't need to in order to appreciate NA.

Catherine is immature and unsophisticated but unlike Mrs Bennet she has "a good heart".

Isabella Thorpe is a precursor of Lydia Bennet. As JA got older she doesn't bother with that sort of selfish bimbo in the later novels.

And she never gave a character as gross as John Thorpe again, but he is very funny.


John Thorpe mentioned two books, Tom Jones and The Monk. He said he didn't have much time for reading. He said there hadn't been a good book since Tom Jones, except The Monk. I would be interested to know what Jane Austen thought of these books. The Monk is like one of Ken Russell's more outrageous film scripts. Tom Jones is a great book, but bawdy in places.

[Jackson Richardson]

She almost certainly didn't care for Fielding - Richardson was her favourite novelist. If she thought Udolpho was corny - which she obviously did - she would not have cared for something as melodramatic as The Monk.

And no doubt she would have disapproved of the sex in both of them.

But her prudishness, as we would see it now, is not apparent in her completely convincing portrayal of Thorpe's selfishness and vulgarity.