Catherine Morland is the heroine of
Jane Austen's 1817 novel ''
Northanger Abbey
''Northanger Abbey'' () is a coming-of-age novel and a satire of Gothic novels written by Jane Austen. Austen was also influenced by Charlotte Lennox's '' The Female Quixote'' (1752). ''Northanger Abbey'' was completed in 1803, the first ...
''. A modest, kind-hearted
ingénue
The ''ingénue'' (, , ) is a stock character in literature, film and a role type in the theater, generally a girl or a young woman, who is endearingly innocent. ''Ingénue'' may also refer to a new young actress or one typecast in such rol ...
, she is led by her reading of
Gothic literature
Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name is a reference to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of ea ...
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. Many of her problems stem from her excessive tendency to take people at their own evaluations; However, while socially naive, Catherine also has an underlying sense of reality to support her; and her honesty and strength eventually see her successfully through her troubles.
Her confrontation at the Abbey itself with the novel's main
father figure
A father figure is usually an older man, normally one with power, authority, or strength, with whom one can identify on a deeply psychological level and who generates emotions generally felt towards one's father. Despite the literal term "father f ...
, General Tilney, brings matters to a head. Unable to see through his manipulations over her postulated inheritance, or to recognise him beneath his fine words as a domestic tyrant, 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. Arguably, however, she has been both wrong and right in her preconscious judgement of the General, 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
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Ann Radcliffe
Ann Radcliffe (née Ward; 9 July 1764 – 7 February 1823) was an English novelist and a pioneer of Gothic fiction. Her technique of explaining apparently supernatural elements in her novels has been credited with gaining respectability for G ...
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Arabella
''Arabella'', Op. 79, is a lyric comedy, or opera, in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration.
Performance history
It was first performed on 1 July 1933 at the D ...
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Henry Tilney
Henry Tilney is the leading man in Jane Austen's 1817 novel '' Northanger Abbey''. The younger son of a local landowner, Tilney is comfortably placed as a beneficed clergyman on his father's estate.
Character
Tilney, with his teasing yet kind-he ...
References
External links
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Catherine Morland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morland, Catherine
Northanger Abbey characters
Literary characters introduced in 1817
Fictional gentry
Female characters in literature