Female Education In Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen expresses progressive ideas on female education in Northanger Abbey.She thinks that girls who are only taught by parents at home do not have their intellect and mind developed well.They need to eliminate their ignorance of the world through such social activities as socializing and reading fiction.In contrast,popular educational theories in Austen's time preferred family education to other educational modes for women based on the assumption that seclusion from the world would guarantee virtue and innocence.And they argued that women should not read novels because these books tended to mislead or corrupt the female sex.Although Austen's educational theory may appear conservative now,it had progressive significance in eighteenth-century England.Northanger Abbey depicts the maturation of Catherine Morland from a seventeen-year-old ignorant girl to an independent and sensible married woman.Raised up by liberal,matter-of-fact but inattentive parents,Catherine has a good heart and a robust body,but knows nothing of the sophistication of world or human nature.Only when she enters into her social life in Bath,does she begins to grow up mentally.There she becomes acquainted with two pairs of siblings:the righteous and learned Tilneys who come from a family of privilege and wealth,and the greedy and ignorant Thorpes born of less well-to-do parents.Through her social interaction with them and the others,Catherine comes to learn how there can be a mixture of good and bad in human nature,and how there can be contradiction between one's words and deeds.Eventually she is able to see through appearances and judge on her own.Throughout her process of maturity,Henry Tilney,Catherine's future husband,has played the important role of a "tutor." He leads her to clarity of vision and proper conduct of reason,and finally to intellectual independence.However,this tutor is not a paragon.A self-proclaimed expert on women,Henry condescendingly instructs Catherine on matters from epistolary style to muslin,with male authority and confidence.However,he is not always right in judgment.He also knows what kind of people his father and brother are,but he still stands by them.As Catherine improves in reason and experience,her attitude towards Henry's mentoring changes.When she first falls in love with him,she thinks most highly of his judgment,and believes him to be right in everything.After the incidents in Bath,she begins to think independently,and feels doubtful about Henry's partiality to Captain Tilney in imputing all the blame to Isabella.From then on,Henry gradually ceases to be the absolute authority.At the end of the novel,when General Tilney's vanity and hypocrisy is exposed,the heroine,now no longer allowing her opinion to be dictated by Henry,comes to a conclusion of the general's character on her own.The pedagogical relationship between Catherine and Henry is more about mutual improvement rather than rigid didacticism.Henry grows up under the repression of General Tilney,and learns constantly to curb his speech when his father says one thing and means another.Because of either filial affection or civility,he tends to show partiality towards his morally defective father and brother.Though he has great respect for Catherine's good nature,he can never stand up to patriarchal tyranny.General Tilney's banishing Catherine from Northanger Abbey finally provokes his open and brave opposition against his father's cruelty.Thanks to Catherine,he begins to free himself from the control of General Tilney.In this novel,Jane Austen expresses her theory on female education,and participates in eighteenth-century debate over two particular issues concerning women's education.One is the relative superiority of a public or a private education.A prevailing idea through most of that century thinks that girls should be educated at home to guarantee virtue and innocence:Boarding school was criticised for being a place where girls learned decorative "accomplishments" and may even be led to sexual ruin.Though Austen's depiction of a boarding school in Emma is not entirely positive,she does not suggest that domestic education is necessarily better.In Northanger Abbey,Catherine has to leave home and receive social education as a complement.By the heroine's example,Austen shows the reader that mere seclusion from the world does not ensure virtue and purity of mind,and is likely to result in ignorance of the real world.Another much debated topic is fiction's value for women.As fiction reading became one of the favourite pastimes for women of the landed gentry and nobility,the vice and virtue of novels came under heated debate by writers and moralists of the eighteenth century.Conservative writers argued against women reading novels,on the grounds that fiction would lead them to corruption,while the radical idea was that the fictional narrative could contribute to female education.Austen suggests that novel has both educational and recreational value.Catherine first indulges herself in gothic fantasy,then is awakened from the fancies,and lastly realizes that human nature can in fact be looked for in novels.Thus Austen shows that good works of fiction can both delight and instruct,as long as the reader knows how to read novels properly.