Jane Austen's Ironic Character: Catherine Morland

Since Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen is a comedic satire, it relies on irony. Irony is the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, usually for humorous or emphatic effect. Although Austen uses irony in all of her characters in this novel, Catherine Morland is seen as one of the most ironic characters. Irony is used to portray Catherine as the unheroic heroine, the comedic figure, and the distorter of reality through Gothic fiction.

First of all, from the beginning, Austen portrays Catherine as the unheroic heroine through irony. In the first sentence of the novel, Austen says that, “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.” (I.i). Austen describes Catherine to not be the ravishing heroine from Gothic novels, but an ordinary and rather pleasing girl who faces society for the first time. When Catherine is described at the beginning of the novel, Austen suggests that she is an unlikely gothic heroine:

She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features; - so much for her person; - and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boys’ plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for the garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief – at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take (I.i).

Austen portrays Catherine as an ordinary girl, which is the opposite to the portrayal of heroines in Gxothic novels. The first chapt...

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...ay every thing open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting? (II. Ix)

Northanger Abbey becomes a story of how a young woman’s perception of the world is warped and distorted by misinterpreting situations of the real world with exaggerated situations of the world in Gothic novels.

In conclusion, Jane Austen portrays Catherine as an ironic character who is naïve, inexperienced, and entrusting. Without relying on her own rationality, Catherine often believes the first thing that she comes into contact with. She is seen as the unheroic heroine, the comedic figure, and the distorter of reality through Gothic fiction because of the use of irony. Austen uses Northanger Abbey to depict the effects of undisciplined reading on young women through the use of irony. Undisciplined reading, as seen in the novel, can lead to improper portrayals of actuality.