Jane Austen Quote of the Week, Week 85

This week the quote i have chosen is from Northanger Abbey (chapter 14).


This quote is a fantastic example of Jane's facetiousness in relation to the gender issues which are often present throughout her novels.
The following paragraph attempts to explain and give reason for Henry Tilney's attraction to Catherine Morland.

"She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance. A misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach [i.e. attract], they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance."

I think that this quote is of absolute brilliance. I think that Jane is showing her feminism whilst maintaining a very humorous read for her audience. The tone is of mockery and I think that it is highly ironic; women at this time were rarely in ignorance and often grouped together in a camouflaged intelligence. Humans are interesting beings arent they??
Jane is so witty here and proves beyond doubt that she is very far away from the definitions of imbecility and ignorance!

Pic 1: Radio Times

Pic 2: Jane Austens World