ABSTRACT
N orthanger Abbey, the earliest of Jane Austen's great comedies of female enlightenment, begins with a resounding NO. “No one,” announces the narrator, “who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.” For Catherine, we learn, is not a forlorn orphan or put-upon maiden: her robust mother did not expire giving birth to her; nor was her indulgent father ever “addicted to locking up his daughters.” At seventeen, though “almost pretty,” Catherine is not spectacularly beautiful, nor a prodigy of wit. “Not less unpropitious for heroism,” Austen slyly observes, “seemed her mind.” Granted, she exhibits “neither a bad heart nor a bad temper,” but she has “no taste for a garden”; her French is “not remarkable”; her skill at drawing “not superior”; and she has “no chance” of throwing a party into raptures by a “prelude on the pianoforte.” Books she has learned to like, but only when they are “all story and no reflection.” 1
