Stephen Donner
Dr. R. Brittenham
English E303
Close Reading One
January 17, 2006
On perhaps a handful or so occasions within Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney proffers his chauvinistic views towards females, most often doing so in the company of and directing them towards Catherine. Henry, however, is quite the wordsmith, and prior to actually rendering those views, usually prefaces them with a high compliment, perhaps intended to catch Catherine off guard or merely indicative of his highly sarcastic tone. Catherine blithely responds to such sentiments, lost in her naïveté, likely because she has no capacity to detect sarcasm.
We find a particularly cogent example in Catherine and Henry Tilney’s introductory conversation in the Lower Rooms of Bath. Henry, of course, hadn’t meant to extol woman’s writing; he had instead meant to put down women for what he sees as their incessant journaling about what he considers banal activites, but framed it sarcastically enough that our naive Catherine blithely responds, wondering aloud, whether “ladies do write so much better letters than gentlemen!” His response—again replete with sarcasm—proceeds to first “praise”: “it appears to me that the usual style of letter-writing among women is faultless, except in three particulars.” Sounds good, doesn’t it? When prompted by Catherine however, Henry divulges his true opinion: these three particulars being: “A general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar” (21).
Of course, one cannot write well without these “three particulars,” as they are so critically components of good writing, and so, in not so many words, Henry has lambasted women’s writing on the whole. Catherine’s indignant response—calling him out on his devaluation of women’s writing—now moves him to “damage control.” Rather than outright apologizing or reversing his statement, he quickly repositions himself, and in a contradictory manner now professes that “In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes” (22).
While the reader should and probably will see through Henry’s quick-stepping verbal repositioning, Catherine doesn’t seem so capable. If not aware of a direct, disparaging remark, she is left pondering and responding to Henry’s sarcastic statements at full face value.
WORKS CITED
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Ed. Marilyn Gaull. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2005.
Posted by stephend at January 24, 2006 2:58 AM