Innocence and Ignorance in Northanger Abbey

In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, we find a character who, like others we have encountered this semester, operates with an innocence born of her virtue. Problematically, however, this innocence often renders these characters ignorant of the dishonorable motivations of others.  Fairly late in Austen's novel, Henry Tilney characterizes Catherine's approach to others as follows: "With you, it is not, How is such a one likely to be influenced? What is the inducement most likely to act upon such a person's feelings, age, situation, and probable habits of life considered?--but, how should I be influenced, what would be my inducement in acting so and so?" (90). While Tilney seems to hold her in high regard for this very reason, inherent in his statement is the danger Catherine potentially faces in her assumptions that others will interact with her with the same rectitude with which she constantly conducts herself.  I am interested in to what extent Austen posits, in this novel, innocence as a positive attribute, and what message about an oft attending ignorance she wishes to share with her readers. 

In the opening pages of the novel, in a comparison between the initial plot points of her work and those one would likely find in a Gothic novel, Austen writes, "But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out" (8). Austen's protagonist, Catherine Morland, seems to take this advice to heart later in the novel when, upon suddenly seeing the man with whom she has shared a brief flirtation, Henry Tilney, with another woman, she rightly assumes this woman to be his sister: "But guided only by what was simple and probable, it had never entered her head that Mr. Tilney could be married . . . he had never mentioned a wife, and he had acknowledged a sister . . . therefore, instead of . . . falling in a fit on Mrs. Allen's bosom, Catherine sat erect, in the perfect use of her senses" (35). Here, then, Austen shows Catherine to be quite capable of sound logic. Perhaps of import, however, is the fact that, in this instance, Catherine's rational calculations inform her only of the happiest of conclusions. It is in other relationships that we find Catherine unable to be so discerning.

For much of the novel, for instance, Catherine is oblivious to the fact that Isabella is using her to further her relationship with James, that John Thorpe intends to marry her, and that General Tilney falsely believes she and her family to be wealthy. What each of these seems to have in common is that none is something she would be happy to know; each would cause her anxiety. This anxiety, and a kind of willful ignorance Catherine seems to employ in order to combat it, is especially apparent in the scene in which Captain Tilney comes upon Isabella and Catherine talking in a quiet corner of the Pump-room, and Catherine is amazed by the impropriety with which Isabella engages in conversation with him: "She wished Isabella had talked more like her usual self, and not so much about money; and had not looked so well pleased at the sight of Captain Tilney" (101). Even with her misgivings so apparent, however, a few days' reflection finds Catherine yet "not allowing herself to suspect her friend" (101). Similarly, while she readily recognizes the amarous feelings Tilney has for her, she is oblivious to that romantic interest which does not please her, as evidenced by her amusing response to John Thorpe's flirtatious suggestion that she will be happy to see him at a later meeting: "There are very few people I am sorry to see" (86). Finally, pleased by the positive attention she receives from General Tilney, she seems not to question why this stern man would single her out for kind treatment, and she ignores hints that would complicate her estimation of him: "'Your father is so very liberal! He told me the other day, that he only valued money as it allowed him to promote the happiness of his children." "The brother and sister looked at each other" (141).  Although Austen endears Catherine to her readers through the very innocence that allows her to think the best of others, it seems, given the many mishaps into which her ignorance of others' true motivations leads her, that Austen does not conceive of such innocence as entirely wise.
 

I wonder, finally, if Catherine's later escape into the fantastical Gothic is a means by which she is able to escape the anxieties of these relationships, thereby maintaining her innocence. It is interesting to note that, while she is long unable to suspect a new friend of duplicity, she readily suspects General Tilney of murdering or secreting his wife within the abbey.  Further, her imaginings of these hideous crimes seem to cause her relatively little uneasiness. At one point, for instance, Catherine determines she will seek out the hidden woman: "Till midnight, she supposed it would be in vain to search; but then . . . she would . . . steal out and look once more. The clock struck twelve—and Catherine had been half an hour asleep" (131). Soon disabused of her misconceptions by Henry, she admits to herself that "Charming as were all of Mrs. Radcliffe's works . . . it was not int them perhaps that human nature . . . was to be looked for" (137). It seems significant, then, that, no longer distracted by these romantic ideas, Catherine must now deal with reality. When, for instance, her ignorance of General Tilney's ulterior motives leads to the shock she experiences at her forced departure, she feels keenly the difference between imagined and actual suffering: ""Yet how different now the source of her inquietude from what it had been then—how mournfully superior in reality and substance! Her anxiety had foundation in fact, her fears in probability; and with a mind so occupied in the contemplation of actual and natural evil" (156). So embroiled has she been in the idea that General Tilney was a murderer, Catherine fails to detect, and protect herself from, that which is truly opprobrious in his character.  Both her own moral innocence and the innocence of reality to which her reading here contributes can be seen, then, as amounting to ignorance.  Did Austen share the view of many in the eighteenth century that certain types of fiction could prove so distracting as to cause a reader to fail to attend to the immediate necessities of his or her own life?