Catherine Morland is the heroine of Jane Austen's 1817 novel Northanger Abbey. A modest, kind-hearted ingénue, she is led by her reading of Gothic literature to misinterpret much of the social world she encounters.
Character Catherine is barely out of the schoolroom when she enters the social whirl of Bath society, and the novel centres around her attempts, often laughable, to learn about life and social realities.Sheila Kaye-Smith, Talking of Jane Austen (London 1946) p. 218-9 Many of her problems stem from her tendency to take people at their own evaluation;J. Nardin, Those Elegant Decorums (1973) p. 65 However, while socially naive, Catherine also has an underlying sense of reality to support her;R. Liddell, The Novels of Jane Austen (London 1963) p. 9 and her honesty and strength eventually see her successfully through her troubles.Sheila Kaye-Smith, Talking of Jane Austen (London 1946) p. 228-9
Her confrontation at Northanger Abbey itself with the novel's main father figure, General Tilney, brings matters to a head. Unable to see through his manipulations over her postulated inheritance,E. J Sabiston, Private Sphere to Public Stage (2008) p. 18 or to recognise him beneath his fine words as a domestic tyrant,M. Waldron, Jane Austen and the Fiction of her Time (Cambridge 1999) p. 31 Catherine turns to Gothic fantasy to explain her sense of unease, only to be embarrassed and humiliated when her imaginings of a gruesome murder are laid bare as false.Sheila Kaye-Smith, Talking of Jane Austen (London 1946) p. 18 Arguably, however, she has been both wrong and right in her preconscious judgement of the General,Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (2007) p. 45 using her Gothic imaginings to articulate the gap between her experience of the General and his social facade.J. Nardin, Those Elegant Decorums (1973) p. 75=7
See also Ann Radcliffe Arabella Henry Tilney
References
External links Catherine Morland