The picturesque and the moral

There is an old photographers' joke that goes as follows:

One photographer tells another that his plane flew over a woman trapped on an ice floe on which she had written out the word "help" in her own blood. The second photographer asks the first what he did about it. The first replies by telling which camera he used, how he framed the shot and what f-stop and shutter speed he used.

Okay, it's an old joke and not very funny anymore. It does draw out an interesting issue about the picturesque. It matters what a picture is of. If, like Wordsworth, we construct a picture of a man whose son has died sitting all day long so consumed by grief that he is unaware of anything happening, we have to ask our self why exactly is this issue beautiful or even sublime.

In addition to the question of taste, there is a moral and pragmatic question. Austen doesn't touch on it here but she will in Sense and Sensibility.

Miseducation of Catherine Morland (4)

Last time for that sentence:

They were viewing the country with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, and decided on its capability of being formed into pictures, with all the eagerness of real taste.

We now can have no doubt, the crack about "real taste" is meant to be ironic and note who and what the irony is targeting.

First it is aimed at the Tilneys, particularly at Henry Tilney. Arch he may be but that won't get him off the hook here; he contributes to Catherine's miseducation. He will do more by building up the Gothic horrors of Northanger Abbey in Catherine's imagination in book 2.

Second, Austen is commenting on the way the picturesque can distort our feelings. More on this later but a devotion to the picturesque is often a sign of moral shallowness in Austen. For my purposes right now the important thing is that Austen is not picking on Ann Radcliffe here. The disconnection is not complete; the picturesque does play a part in Radcliffe, not surprisingly for, like Catherine Morland, she never had been to the places she discusses in her books. But it is not reading that book that is confusing Catherine here—it is learning about the picturesque from Henry that does the job.

Miseducation of Catherine Morland (3)

I want to stick with that sentence:

They [the Tilney's] were viewing the country with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, and decided on its capability of being formed into pictures, with all the eagerness of real taste.

That last phrase, "with all the eagerness of real taste" is intriguing. That wording suggests irony. Austen does not say, "with real taste"; what she says suggests that they are doing something that resembles real taste but is not.

One interesting, and simple example of picturesque principles is that the best view is up the hill. You can prove this for yourself by taking a picture up a hill and then from the top. No matter how wonderful the view from the top of the hill, the view up usually makes a better picture. And so Catherine's education requires her to learn this. Here she is before Henry's lectrure on the picturesque:

She knew nothing of drawing -- nothing of taste: and she listened to them with an attention which brought her little profit, for they talked in phrases which conveyed scarcely any idea to her. The little which she could understand, however, appeared to contradict the very few notions she had entertained on the matter before. It seemed as if a good view were no longer to be taken from the top of an high hill, and that a clear blue sky was no longer a proof of a fine day.

And here she is afterward:

Catherine was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape.

This entire section of the walk is recounted by the narrator so we can be clear that it is Jane Austen who is being arch here and not Henry Tilney.

Miseducation of Catherine Morland (2)

The next step in Catherine's miseducation comes courtesy of Henry Tilney who, along with his sister, has begun to analyze the landscape on their country walk in picturesque terms. Amd here we are on the edge of pretty deep water because the picturesque is a big subject generally and it is a big subject for Austen in particular.

A whole lot of speculation, much of it much more intelligent and well-informed than I could hope to be, has gone into determining where Miss Austen stood on big philosophical questions of her day. Was she opposed to romanticism or partly in line with and partly opposed? Was she a Burkean? Had she read Shaftesbury? All, as I say, interesting stuff but we can be absolutely certain that Austen had views about the picturesque as we find it discussed directly here in Northanger Abbey, again in Sense and Sensibility, in Pride and Prejudice, in Emma and in Mansfield Park. There may even be a passage in Persuasion that I have not found yet.

For now, let's just note one of the most wonderful sentences Austen wrote, and she wrote lots of wonderful sentences:

They [the Tilney's] were viewing the country with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, and decided on its capability of being formed into pictures, with all the eagerness of real taste.

Let's stop and teach ourselves to suck eggs for a bit. "Capability" is a fascinating word choice because its use in association with landscape would have had contemporary readers thinking of "Capability" Brown, a landscape architect famous or infamous, depending on your taste, for improving on nature. Among those who valued the picturesque or the sublime in nature, Capability Brown was despised. Austen linking him here with the picturesque is yoking two contradictory notions together.

Is she just playing with us or is she suggesting that the two are not that different and that the education Henry and Eleanor Tilney are giving Catherine is a distortion. That framing the sublime is to mold and falsify nature every bit as much as Brown's landscapes?

Miseducation of Catherine Morland (1)

Much, but not all (a point I will return to) of Catherine's sentimental miseducation come from reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. In the first half of the book, we see her beginning with real life experiences and then rethinking them in terms she has picked up from reading Gothic novels.

Chapter 11 of bk 1 for example. Catherine is hoping that the weather will clear up so she can take a country walk with Henry and Miss Tilney:

"There, it is twenty minutes after twelve, and now I shall give it up entirely. Oh! That we had such weather here as they had at Udolpho, or at least in Tuscany and the south of France! -- the night that poor St. Aubin died! -- such beautiful weather!"

Not surprisingly, just a few pages later she is seeing her visit to Blaize Castle as a chance to experience the fictional world she has just wished for:

To feel herself slighted by them was very painful. On the other hand, the delight of exploring an edifice like Udolpho, as her fancy represented Blaize Castle to be, was such a counterpoise of good as might console her for almost anything.

When she finally does get her country walk with Henry and his sister she compares the countryside with the landscape of Udolpho:

They determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath.

"I never look at it," said Catherine, as they walked along the side of the river, "without thinking of the south of France."

"You have been abroad then?" said Henry, a little surprised.

"Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. "

Her reading is changing teh way she looks at the world.