1 Introduction
“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine”.
These are the words Jane Austen chose to introduce the protagonist of her novel “Northanger Abbey” and they seem to give the impression of
Catherine being “desperately naive, dangerously unsophisticated, and frequently slow to comprehend“(Kindred 196) right from the start. This impression seems to be confirmed as soon as the reader notices Catherine’s disability of reading people and their behaviour and it even gets worse when it becomes clear that Catherine also “mistake[s] gothic exaggerations” of her beloved Gothic novels “for unmediated representation” (Johnson 35). But as Austen’s novel is considered a Bildungsroman by a lot of critics, Catherine is “capable of …show more content…
In the beginning, Catherine could not read Isabella’s character and she failed at reading the novels properly, either. She allowed her mind to be tricked by words of people and by words of novels and slowly slipped out of reality. But when her disability of reading the novels and her tricked, ill fated mind nearly lead her into social disgrace and threat her happiness in real life, Catherine overcomes her own fantasies and pipe dreams, and as soon as she manages to deal with the Gothic novels in a proper way, she acquires the ability of reading people.
Of course, it cannot be denied that Henry is an important trigger for Catherine’s development, but in the end it can be proven that misreading the Gothic novels in combination with Catherine’s shameful feelings towards her own behaviour, deriving from misreading the novels, are indispensable for Catherine to overcome her naive mind, which previously prevented her from reading people.
Therefore, the novels are an important lesson for Catherine, which help her to become a more mature, young
“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine”.
These are the words Jane Austen chose to introduce the protagonist of her novel “Northanger Abbey” and they seem to give the impression of
Catherine being “desperately naive, dangerously unsophisticated, and frequently slow to comprehend“(Kindred 196) right from the start. This impression seems to be confirmed as soon as the reader notices Catherine’s disability of reading people and their behaviour and it even gets worse when it becomes clear that Catherine also “mistake[s] gothic exaggerations” of her beloved Gothic novels “for unmediated representation” (Johnson 35). But as Austen’s novel is considered a Bildungsroman by a lot of critics, Catherine is “capable of …show more content…
In the beginning, Catherine could not read Isabella’s character and she failed at reading the novels properly, either. She allowed her mind to be tricked by words of people and by words of novels and slowly slipped out of reality. But when her disability of reading the novels and her tricked, ill fated mind nearly lead her into social disgrace and threat her happiness in real life, Catherine overcomes her own fantasies and pipe dreams, and as soon as she manages to deal with the Gothic novels in a proper way, she acquires the ability of reading people.
Of course, it cannot be denied that Henry is an important trigger for Catherine’s development, but in the end it can be proven that misreading the Gothic novels in combination with Catherine’s shameful feelings towards her own behaviour, deriving from misreading the novels, are indispensable for Catherine to overcome her naive mind, which previously prevented her from reading people.
Therefore, the novels are an important lesson for Catherine, which help her to become a more mature, young