Though she's naïve and innocent, she has sexual fantasies. And that I believe makes her more relatable. Too often young female characters have been characterized as either being promiscuous or practically asexual. Catherine was better balanced.
shareCatherine is very young and completely innocent. She likely knows nothing about sex. This script has her reading The Monk, but in the book, she reads The Mysteries of Udolpho, which is not as blatantly sexual. And the nude scene is nothing less than gratuitous.
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I'm not sure what you mean by completely innocent. Does she think babies are delivered by storks? Anyway, normal young women fantasize about sex. Unfortunately, some authors like to pretend they do not.
shareMost well-bred young girls went to their wedding night having no idea what to expect. It's hard to have a truly sexual fantasy if you don't know what you are fantasizing about.
Austen never leaves us in doubt as to whether or not her characters are having sex. We know that Lydia and Wickham do. We know that Maria and Henry do. We also know that Isabella and Captain Tilney are not. Catherine is naive and innocent. She is not worldly or sophisticated in the slightest. Even if she did have desires, she likely wouldn't have known what those feelings were or how to act upon them.
Andrew Davies has said repeatedly that he likes to add sexual situations where Austen never mentioned them. He has said that he likes to "improve" upon Austen's work. Frankly, that's just not possible. How can one improve upon perfection?
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Sexual fantasies don't have to include intercourse, they can just be about foreplay. Speaking of Lydia, I'm sure she had sexual fantasies. But I'm also sure girls like Catherine and Lizzie had them as well. They, unlike Lydia, kept their sexual feelings very private. In the time period Jane Austen was writing, she couldn't have characters like Catherine and Lizzie have sexual fantasies. Of course that was unrealistic.
shareI disagree that well-bred women didn't know what to expect. Most of them lived in agrarian settings. Horse breeding was practically a spectator sport for everyone. Times were by necessity a little more earthy even for those of breeding. Remember, all child bearing happened at home and even the most genteel are going to yell. Nursing was performed by women and upper class women tended their family members. You had to be tough to be a woman of those times.
shareNot true. A young woman Catherine Morland's age would certainly know what sex was. Let's not pretend these people were some kind of asexual aliens just because they lived 200 years ago.
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They could enjoy it, yes. The reason the idea exists that people didn't enjoy sex is some men just saw women as a means of release and didn't try to please the women. If a woman had a good lover who actually cared about her enjoyment of the act, then the woman could definitely enjoy it. I think the women who suffered unfulfilling sex were often those in arranged marriages where there was no love and sex was seen as an obligation.
shareI normally don't like sex being shown where it didn't appear in the originals, but... if you are talking about the bath scene, I found it actually cute. It's obviously a sign that Catherine feels attracted to Tilney, but it's also very innocent. I didn't mind that one, really. It's an innocent sensual fantasy, the type a naive girl would have.
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