Though many of the leading female characters in Jane Austen’s novels seem to emphasize the gender stereotype of the 18th century woman, Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Moreland displays strong feminist tones. Several critics might agree that Catherine Moreland is most often described as a submissive young lady confined to society. However, coming from a society that desired their women to be mostly docile, Catherine openly expresses her opinions and moods. The dominance of her views and her ability to be able to share her thoughts straightforwardly, makes Catherine a feminist character. In an even more drastic effort, Catherine imparts onto Henry Tilney how to divert himself from societal limitations and voice his own opinions. By taking a different approach on understanding the feminist elements of Northanger Abbey, it is clear to see that Austen’s believes women are smart, independent and have ingenious competencies equivalent to their male counterparts. Many critics may only read Northanger Abbey as a parody of the endangerments of a hyperactive imagination of a mindless young woman, but a careful reading of the passages displays the intelligence instilled in the unlikely heroine. Although Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is not outwardly represented as a feminist novel, by portraying Catherine and the other characters in a satirical way, Austen is able to question the stereotypes of women in literature.
Catherine’s independence reveals itself immediately in novel when Austen begins to paint her main character in a way that would not describe a typical heroine. “Catherine was fond of all boy’s plays, and greatly preferred cricket to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a ro...
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...he women permits the audience to recognize that the author is portraying the matter of feminism in a mocking manner. Austen uses a witty sense of humor to reveal to her audience that she is attacking the issue of feminism in an unordinary way, but at the same time establishes to her readers that she holds strong feminist ideals.
Critics such as Joanne Cordon have stated. “Northanger Abbey’s narrator uses her familiarity with narrative form as she mocks the grandiose behavior of its female characters who would react to an affront with silence, avoidance, or flirtation as a form of revenge” (Cordon 46). Jane Austen criticizes the traditional societal roles for women as she displays her own skills to avoid such overbearing standards. In Austen’s writing, she uses the term heroine to define types of actions that are in actuality pretentious, conventional and delusive.
The ways women are presented in Northanger Abbey are through the characters of Catherine Morland, Isabella Thorpe, Eleanor Tilney, Mrs Allen, and the mothers of the Morland and Thorpe family, who are the main female characters within this novel. I will be seeing how they are presented through their personalities, character analysis, and the development of the character though out the novel. I will be finding and deciphering scenes, conversations and character description and backing up with quotes to show how Austen has presented women in her novel Northanger Abbey.
Evelina and Northanger Abbey both belong in the 18th-century literature syllabus because they are good examples of how two different vehicles used to tell a story—a “history,” told in epistolary form, and a witty, tongue-in-cheek narrative—can completely transform the tone of a piece. On the surface, these are two novels about young women growing up in Europe during the18th century. They are both told with humor, they both offer great insight into the mind of their observant female leads, and they both give the reader a glimpse into the manners and customs of the time. On a deeper level, however, the differences between the two texts lie in the manner in which the story is told—and this comparison point is where the reader truly gleans a richer, fuller view of females coming-of-age in the 18th century.
Women in the time of Jane Austen dedicated their lives to being good-looking (seen in the vanity of Lydia and Kitty especially) and accomplished to ensure they were marriage material, just as the maiden tried to be enchanting and desirable for The Prince. Both texts illustrate an imbalance and struggle for equality within the oppressive rules and expectations that revolve around women’s lives, and so, their relationships.
Through Emma and Mrs. Elton, Jane Austen makes clear her vast understanding of the society in which she lives, and she shakes her finger to it. The heartache that both characters cause, Mrs. Elton in Jane Fairfax and Emma in Harriet, serves as a reproach to the gossipy, haughty, conspiring women in her society. Mr. Knightly, who serves as Emma’s conscience through most of the novel, best portrays the lesson by telling Emma, “Mystery; Finesse – how they pervert the understanding!” (352), and it is this advice that Austen makes clear throughout her novel.
While there is no shortage of male opinions concerning the role of females, which usually approve of male dominance, there is a lack of women expressing views on their forced subservience to men. This past subordination is the very reason there were so few females who plainly spoke out against their position, and the search for females expressing the desire for independence necessarily extends to the few historical works by women that do exist. Jane Austen is a well-known female author, and it is natural that her novels would be studied in an attempt to find a covert feminist voice. However, though certain feminist elements may exist, one common theme found throughout the novels Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma, makes it impossible to label these works as completely supporting feminism. The idea that women should not be allowed to have power, should be controlled by men, and that males should use their power to the fullest extent is inescapable. This idea is raised repeatedly throughout these novels.
Jane Austen writes about the society of her time, achievements, behaviors, values, prejudices, aspirations. She belongs to the middle class within the social class system in. The novel is set during the time of the regency, which is a bridge between the Georgian and Victorian period. The eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries from part of the perspective of the European history. At this time they were having a lot of changes in economic, political, social and cultural. “Austen herself notes that she knows little of the world at large and instead chooses to write about what she does know.”
In Northanger Abbey, Austen intended to reflect a contrast between a normal, healthy-natured girl and the romantic heroines of fiction thorough the use of characterization. By portraying the main character, Catherine Moorland, as a girl slightly affected with romantic notions, Jane Austen exhibits the co...
Abbey are crucial for developing and maturing Catherine’s character. Bibliography Austen, Jane. [1818] 1990 Northanger Abbey, ed. by John Davie, with an introduction by Terry Castle, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press Regan, Stephen. Ed. 2001.
Jane Austen Society of North America, Inc. A Brief Biography. jasna.org. 26 April. 2014.
Bronte is known as one of the first revolutionary and challenging authoress’ with her text Jane Eyre. The society of her time was male dominated, women were marginally cast aside and treated as trophies for their male counterparts. Their main role in life was to be a mother and a wife, “ Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life……the more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it.” A quote from a letter Robert Southey wrote to Bronte. A clear sign of the mentality and opposition Bronte was up against. A woman’s “proper duties” of course being to tend and wait on her “master’s” every whim and need. Women during Bronte’s time had no clear voice, none that was of any merit, they were a silent category of society, silenced by their male oppressors. Bronte’s book was in fact written before the first women’s rights movement had happened, yet it puts forward an image of an independent strong character, of a passionate and almost rebellious nature. A character “refusing subservience, disagreeing with her superiors, standing up for her right’s, and venturing creative thoughts.” I put forward that Bronte throughout her text not only revises the themes of male power and oppression, but reconstructs them also. The text is a female bildungsroman of it’s time, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly tackling the patriarchal view of women.
In Mansfield Park, Jane Austen presents her readers with a dilemma: Fanny Price is the heroine of the story, but lacks the qualities Jane Austen usually presents in her protagonists, while Mary Crawford, the antihero, has these qualities. Mary is active, effective, and witty, much like Austen’s heroines Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennet. Contrasting this is Fanny, who is timid, complacent, and dull. Austen gives Mary passages of quick, sharp, even occasionally shocking, dialogue, while Fanny often does not speak for pages at a time. When she does, her speeches are typically banal and forgettable. In Mansfield Park, Austen largely rests Fanny’s standing as protagonist on the fact that Fanny adheres to the moral standards of Austen’s era. Mary Crawford makes a more satisfying and appealing heroine but due to her modern-era sensibility and uncertain moral fiber, she cannot fulfill this role.
In a world dominated by patriarchal societies, Jane Austen wrote several novels concerning the gender roles of men and women. During the period Persuasion was written, society began toying with the idea of equity in gender roles. Jane Austen explored the idea of gender evenhandedness in the novel Persuasion. Austen used her book as a tool to express that both men and women could be emotional, stoic, irrational and rational. By using social class and customs to express the nonsensicality of believing all men and women were given birth roles in society based on gender and social class, Austen created a world that challenged gender roles. After reading Persuasion, it is evident that Jane Austen wanted readers to see men and women as equally
Just as Marianne must experience a considerable amount of maturity, so too must Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey (1818) when she is first meet by readers. Unlike the characters of Elizabeth and Elinor, who are known for their cleverness and good sense, Catherine’s: “mind [is] about as ignorant and uniformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is” . Despite her immaturity Catherine has an affectionate heart “disposition cheerful and open, without conceit or affection of any kind – her manners just removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a girl; her persona pleasing, and, when in good looks, pretty” . In the development of both her protagonist and plotline, Austen parodies the popular Gothic novel of the day by calling Catherine a “heroine” in the very first sentence of the book: “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine” . Austen is of course using irony, as she is comically referring to the usual heroine portrayed in such novels, beautiful damsels in distress who are waiting to be rescued by a handsome man. Catherine is not one of these heroines; she is simply an ordinary girl waiting for something to happen. Before she is able to discover her hero she must learn how to assess the character of others, and learn how to understand herself before she can claim the title of “heroine”.
An intelligent, stubborn, and free-spirited character. One that many women today connect with and see as being Jane Austen’s most feministic character. The other women in Pride and Prejudice do not like Elizabeth very much. She does not fit the social norm of that time. Being lady-like, keeping her thoughts to herself, and willing to get married as soon as she can. Elizabeth’s most admirable characteristic is her independence. Although her thoughts and views are constantly looked down upon throughout the story. This occurs because of the sick expectations and restrictions placed upon women in her society. While reading Pride and Prejudice, you cannot help but look down on every character that criticizes Elizabeth. Jane Austen shows us that these characters’ lack of feministic views is responsible for the wrongs done to Elizabeth. Especially the way she depicts Miss Bingley and Lady Catherine de
Emily Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights, demonstrates a social criticism on women’s power to control their own fate and the ideal women in the nineteenth century. Specifically in Lyn Pykett’s, Changing the Names: The Two Catherines, a strong feminist perspective is explored. In her criticism she goes through many different analyses of Catherine Earnshaw-Linton and her daughter Cathy and what they represent in regard to a women’s power and social expectations in the nineteenth century. Pykett says that the two Catherines represent women’s true nature according to Brontë. Catherine Earnshaw-Linton is faced with the choice between two men but chooses based on what is accepted in her society, the man that can provide her economically, not the man whom she loves. This marriage to Edgar instead of Heathcliff is the source of Catherine’s problems and ultimately her demise. It causes one to question whether it is right to marry for the social aspect or for true love. Young Cathy seems to face the problem her mother has as well but she finds a way to be true to her nature and fight the tyrann...