Sympathetic Imagination in Northanger AbbeyCritics as well as characters in the novel Northanger Abbey have noticed Catherine Morland's naivety and commented on it. In this essay I have chosen to use the names given to Catherine's lack of worldliness by A. Walton Litz in Jane Austen: A Study of Her Artistic Development[1] and by Christopher Gillie in A Preface to Jane Austen.[ 2] Litz refers to “what the 18th century would have called the sympathetic imagination, that faculty which promotes benevolence and generosity” (Litz, p. 67). Gillie calls this same quality "candor" and declares its importance to Jane Austen herself, gleaning a definition from one of Austen's own prayers: Bow us down, oh my God! to think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in examining our own conduct, to consider our fellow men with kindness and to judge of all that they say and do with that charity which we ourselves would desire from them (quoted in Gillie, p.22). Both critics recognize that Catherine's possession of this quality is problematic; it is desirable, but it must also be regulated if we want a heroine to not often be duped by the harsh world. Gillie and Litz also recognize that an investigation of this enigma is at the heart of all of Jane Austen's work. I believe that the exploration of this fundamental conundrum is at the heart of Northanger Abbey, and that this should thus reject their claims. who believe that the lessons Catherine learns in the Gothic section of the novel are thematically most important.[3] I maintain that Northanger Abbey is not simply a curiosity, a gothic burlesque, a relic that recalls the parodic style of much of the youth....... middle of paper ... ...1974).For example, Marvin Mudrick, Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952). Peter L. De Rose and SW McGuire, A Concordance to the Works of Jane Austen, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982). Northanger Abbey, p. 56.Northanger Abbey, p. 18, and Northanger Abbey, p. 206.Northanger Abbey uses "naive" three times in two volumes; Emma uses “naive” four times in three volumes. [JF Burrows, Computation into Criticism: a Study of Jane Austen's Novels and an experiment in Method, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). See Northanger Abbey, pp. 22-23. See Northanger Abbey, p. 92, p. 110-112. [Return] See Northanger Abbey, p. 30. “That a young woman should be in love and that the love of a young man should not be declared is a heterodoxy which prudence, and even politics, must not permit” (Johnson's Collected Works, V. 168).