Bill Bixby

            On Monday morning I memorized the second verse of “Nicotine” by Serge Gainsbourg and made some more adjustments in my translation. 

            I re-read a couple of chapters of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen and had 41 pages left when I felt sleepy and took an early siesta at 12:30. 

            I got up at 14:00 and had kettle chips, salsa and yogourt for lunch. 

            I took an early bike ride to Ossington and Bloor. It was cold but I was comfortably bundled.

            At 17:00 I logged onto Quercus and saw this week’s Brit Lit 2 lecture was up. 

            The lecture was on the second half of Northanger Abbey and the theme unifying the two sections. 

            The scene at Beecham Cliff shows the difference between Henry and Isabella as mentors for us and Catherine. Henry doesn’t only tell Catherine what makes a picturesque scene but teaches her the forms and techniques to make the judgement herself. 

            There is a larger theme of flirting. Flirting is a game of give and take. It is improvisational and therefore risky and difficult. But the stakes are low. In games and play we are extracted from the regular conditions of life. The game pulls us away to think and with the playing of the game one can learn in safety the rules and structures of the world without the dangers of mistakes. There are no real life consequences. 

            We learn in this scene the idea of metadiscourse. How does Henry teach Catherine? Through games and play in which he urges her to test her imagination and ideas against the world in a low risk situation. Crucial to this is his metadiscourse in which he talks about the game even while it is being played. There is a parallel between readers and Catherine. Playfulness is a quality of both the novel and good learning about the world. Just as Henry is teaching Catherine how to be a good reader of society through play, the narrator is teaching us to be good readers of novels by playing with us. Henry asks Catherine to test her imagination but also explains how the game works. He doesn’t just ask her questions but explains that this is the convention and how the game works. He engages her but points out the rules. Playfulness is a quality of the novel. 

            When the narrator talks about novels she won’t just say novels are bad and that heroines shouldn’t be reading them. She teaches us similarly to explain where we stand. 

            The major point today is the central concern of novel. Northanger Abbey has been accused of being two separate novels inelegantly stitched together. The Bath part is traditional Austen while the second part is a parody of Gothic fiction. Some say it is not well put together. Yet the idea of judgement does tie them together. This word is used in the crucial scene when Henry confronts Catherine’s suspicions about her father. “What have you been judging from?” The novel takes up the issue of judgement on two levels at the same time. On one hand the story is about bad judgement, especially the second half. Failure to judge when necessary and over-judgement. But it also alerts us to the misjudgements of the first half. The fabula of the novel hinges on two misjudgements in the first half. 

            I say the bad judgements are that James is going to marry Isabella and that Isabella is faithful, that Isabella is a good friend, that Catherine’s family has money, that Captain Tilney is honourable but just uninformed, and that John can be trusted. 

            John misjudges that Catherine’s family has money because she is friends with the Allens and they are rich. He tells this to the general and this affects the later part and Catherine’s invitation to Northanger. Catherine misjudges of the importance of money in marriage in this era and in these classes. These two misjudgements drive the plot. If there had been no misjudgement she would not have been invited. Isabella also thinks Catherine’s family has money and is disappointed. The plot and story is hinged on two crucial misjudgements. 

            The novel also plays and perhaps flirts with the reader to induce bad reading. General Tilney doesn’t like them in the room. Austen is brilliant. She knows that expectations and narrative signals can lead us to make mistakes. Did you think General really was a murderer? 

            No I didn't. What is wrong is that he’s just an asshole. 

            He is not a Gothic villain but just patriarchal monster. These misjudgements drive the fabula. Catherine goes through three crises in judgement. These are ways of thinking of structure. The confrontation with Henry at the abbey is focal but she has crises of judgement throughout. Her judgement of Isabella and Frederick, the Abbey, and the final judgement. After volume one and James and Isabella are engaged Catherine can’t figure out Isabella’s actions toward Frederick and this presages the question “Judging from what?” From internal feelings, rather than externals such as age and situation. This is an example of how the reader parallels Catherine’s own trajectory of growth. We must use external sources to make good judgements about the world, situation and plot. We cannot rely on what we have learned from other books, otherwise we will read like the naïve private reader mocked in chapter one. We also cannot rely on intuition. Like Catherine we must learn how to read the world better, judge according to more stable criteria and test out judgements. 

            She carefully shows Catherine’s naivety. Catherine asks someone else. Henry is trying to teach her how to figure things out. He says instead of trying to understand others she says what she would I do. She judges from her own experience rather than others. She thinks everyone is the same instead of considering family situations of money. Our situation parallels this. We need external sources. People aren’t good just because you are. We have to read and try to understand. We should consult the internal but also the external. This problem is suspicion. Her observations are correct but internal feelings block her understanding. Her judgement is bad in the sense that she can’t get it. It is good because she is generous and cares and expects the best. But there is a limit to that. A fine imagination is good but test it. 

            The first crisis comes at end of the whole thing with Isabella. Henry tries to teach Catherine to judge. What can Frederick mean? Henry says he can’t know the heart of even his brother. If one is guessing let us all guess. This is Henry’s final exam for Catherine. We don’t have the answers. Don’t let others guess for you. Here is the information and now you judge. Catherine says I won’t judge. He mansplains. Her failure is refusal when judgement is required. 

            The second crisis is Catherine at the abbey over the general. She needs to learn to be a better judge. Even Isabella’s bad behaviour teaches. Judgment involves contexture and testing. It requires beginning with right premises and knowing what genre we are in. This comes forward in the second half. The lessons that Catherine learns about judgement are also posed to the reader who also must judge correctly. 

            Which genre are we in? Romance or Gothic? We learn we cannot rely on the conventions of the romance novel or the Gothic. We must question our assumptions about what matters. Here engagements are not important. The most important scene that we don’t see is James and Isabella’s engagement. The marriage plot is not useful. 

            Henry continues to try to teach Catherine to read. He talks about the abbey’s Gothic pretensions. He uses meta discourse to mark the shifts from certain ways of understanding the world to other ways. It is a fun way to think of world as if it were a Gothic novel at the abbey. He carefully marks this off. This game involves a marked shift in frameworks, in genres that define the rules of the game. One needs to know it is a game, flirtation, one needs little interpersonal indicators. It needs boundaries. Catherine announces that they are entering the world of fantasy. They are going to play with books. Henry confirms this is just like a book. Transition to the abbey confirms a shift back to the real, odd and inconsistent. The abbey is nothing like a book. It is Gothic in form but not actually. You formed a favourable idea. She says it is like one reads. He says are you prepared for the horrors of a Gothic building that is like one reads about. 

           The shift to books and the logic of the Gothic. References to Gothic tropes are in the footnotes and one needs to look them up. This section will be opaque otherwise. Repetition that it is a fantasy like in a book. She seems to know but she can’t make the full shift. The entrance to the Abbey grounds should remind her that it is not like books but she is confused. She thinks inconsistently. The abbey is Gothic in form but not in reality. The inside is modern. She should revise expectations. She loses her mentors at this point. 

            Unlike in Bath where she knows she doesn’t know, in the abbey she thinks she has an interpretive key. Her observations are right but wrong in the context she develops to understand them. Without interlocutors, she is left to her own devices. We become largely dependent on Catherine’s judgement, which is compelling though flawed. 

           We can see the importance of the dialogue in Chapter 23 where she is left entirely inside her mind. This is coming off the end of the walk in which Catherine leads the dialogue. Intellectually, though rightly requesting information about the world, she begins with the wrong assumption and asks questions that only confirm what she already suspects. Catherine recognizes the discomfort and tension around the novel but situates it in the wrong genre. This is not a Gothic romance but a domestic drama. There is tension because the general is a vulgar improver and a petty tyrant in matters of money, work and manners. Catherine is right to be suspicious but wrong about why. Tilney is a bad father and a bad husband. We interpret through our sense. There is something wrong we sense. She begins with wrong assumptions and fits everything into those. This is about the Bath engagement and not the abbey. 

            The general tries to control money. He’s mean. Catherine is not suspicious of Isabella. The crux of this is on the stairs. Henry understands what Catherine has been thinking and reminds her of what is probable. 

            I say Henry is upset that she thinks his father is a murderer but perhaps also that Catherine is perhaps too dumb to think about marrying. 

            He’s mad about her terrible judgement. How could this be possible? She has the premises before her but puts it in the wrong context. He gets over it. The larger theme at the heart of the educational project of the novel is how to be a good reader and judge. Judgement unites the two parts of the novel. It does this through two parallel crises of judgement: Isabella and Frederick and of the general. Judgement works on the level of her crises but also ours. The novel tempts us into positions and acts of poor judgement. It does this not to chastize us but because it argues that good judgement, like good reading is never perfect the first time through. The novel emphasizes that one can fail in judgement but must practice. 

            He says Catherine grows to learn to judge. I don't agree. 

            The novel tempts us to make bad judgements. We seeing Gothic tropes but it is not Gothic after all. We judge the general too. What did we judge from? If we read carefully we see we are caught up in Gothic tropes. We learn with Catherine. The Final crisis is a minor moment. The second Isabella letter. What is different in the judgement? Catherine is able to make a judgement that disagrees with Henry. Henry says Isabella has no heart and there is no harm from his brother. She says no, that his brother is bad and she feels bad for Isabella. There is no answer. We don’t know Frederick. She gives a judgement on her own and it is a good fair judgement. It is a sign she’s learned. 

            I disagree that her offering a right judgement is proof that she has learned. She has disagreed with Henry many times before but been convinced of her error. If she is right once it does not prove she has good judgement. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day. 

             At the end of the novel her dismissal is not a misjudgement on her part. Her misunderstanding is fair because nobody knows what is happening. Henry is also tricked by his father. Everyone can make a mistake. The importance of forgiveness. No one can know the consequences of all our actions. She has no control over this. It ends with a final call for us to judge. I don’t know the moral but I’ll leave it to you. It’s open. Is the narrator playing with us? Is there an answer? Is she just trying to get us to think? 

            It took me two hours to type a one hour lecture. 

            I cut up a whole chicken and rubbed it with the rest of my curry paste. I roasted it and had one of the legs for dinner with a potato and gravy while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story a rich 19 year old named Ron Bailey in a fast convertible runs a farmer’s truck off the road. When Andy catches up with him Ron tries to pay him off and when that doesn’t work he threatens Andy with the fact that his father is one of the most powerful people in the state. Andy takes Ron in for two days to wait for trial with the circuit judge. That afternoon Andy makes Ron come fishing with him and Opie because he promised Opie before Ron was arrested and he can’t leave him alone in the jail. Ron has a good time and even catches a big fish but then he thinks Andy is trying to soften him up and throws it back. That night Otis comes in drunk as usual for a Saturday and is upset to find Ron sleeping in his cell. Barney tells him to go in the other cell but Otis says he can’t sleep in a strange room. So Ron has to move. On Sunday night Andy makes him come home for dinner. Opie confesses that he broke a window with a baseball and Andy tells him he’ll have to pay for it with his allowance. Ron asks Andy if he wasn’t too rough on the boy but Andy explains that he has to learn to pay for his mistakes so he doesn’t always expect to be bailed out. The next day Ron’s lawyer arrives. He brings in the farmer that Ron had run off the road and gets him to confess it was his fault, probably for a large sum of money. Ron tells him it’s wrong because it was his fault and he doesn’t want to be released on false grounds. He’s learned his lesson. 

           The nineteen year old Ron was played by a 28 year old Bill Bixby, who the next year became the co-star of “My Favourite Martian”. Five years later he was the star of “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and eight years after that he became an even bigger star in “The Incredible Hulk”.