In class Wednesday, David brought up the extremely interesting fact of Catherine’s stark incongruence. Surprisingly, I had not noticed, but once David made the matter known, it was glaringly obvious.
When we are first introduced to Catherine, our general perception of her is that she is oblivious. To be more specific, Catherine is unaware of subtle social cues, and subtle suggestions that provide insight into characters and relationships.
The first example is her inability to realize John Thorpe’s feelings for her. When Catherine is in the company of John Thorpe, the circumstance is akin to a “double-date” of sorts with Isabella and James. His overconfidence and inconsistencies are typical of a man trying to impress a woman, however Catherine is not familiar with this kind of behavior, and is thus unable to identify it as such. To the reader, John Thorpe’s insinuations about marriage to Catherine blatantly suggest his wishes. Coupled with his “fidget[ing] about” and his being “wholly self-occupied” (100), it is clear that John Thorpe loves Catherine. He says, “And I hope-I hope, Miss Morland, you will not be sorry to see me” (101). To which Catherine innocently replies, “Company is always cheerful” (101), completely disregarding any reference to his person in particular at all. When she is informed by Isabella of John’s feelings, she responds with “all the earnestness of truth (113) that “[she] never was sensible of them for a moment” (113).
On the other hand, once Catherine arrives at Northanger Abbey, she goes from suspecting nothing, to finding reason to suspect in the most trivial of matters; from something as simple as suspecting a chest (129) or a drawer (134) to concocting this extraordinary scheme of the murder of Mrs. Tilney by General Tilney. Once Catherine discovered that the late Mrs. Tilney’s portrait did not hang in General Tilney’s bedroom, Catherine concludes, “Here was another proof” (143). Furthermore, she decides that “he must have been dreadfully cruel to her (143)! More ‘evidence’ is found when General Tilney prevents her entering a particular room (147), for the room is most definitely where “the dreadful scene had passed” (147).
In regards to the first part, I guess the situation would be remedied by catherine reading trashy romances rather than supernatural horror stories. Test case: will the Twilight generation be less awkward with relationships than the Harry Potter generation? Subtle corollary: I can blame Harry Potter for being awkward around people I like? Lame conclusion where nobody wins: Cho Chang should have stuck around longer and continued to be a whiny bitch while Harry continued to be an insensitive jerk.
ReplyDeleteas far as the second part, i find it very strange and artificial that Catherine abrubtly and suddenly becomes a slave to her gothic fiction, while it is hardly mentioned as one of Catherine's character flaws in the first part. I wonder if Austen made a sudden decision to change catherine and simply didn't want to or couldn't change the first book. might this book have been written in serials? Her newfound love of the gothic novel and her quick study of social cues from the Tilneys doesn't seem to quite be enough to not make her character change seem too abrupt.
I do really wish, however, that we could see catherine's reaction to some actual horror, some person climbing in her windows and snatching her people up or something. would it be different after reading the novels? how much does what we consume affect the way we think, anyways?