Catherine seems to get hate because she comes off as unintelligent and because she marries a very intelligent man. Kind of an odd angle for me to take, but Catherine is worthy of Henry Tilney and this is why:
Catherine tells the truth, even when it is painful to her. It’s easy to tell the truth when it helps you (like explaining why you missed a walk in the forest) but Catherine does not lie even when it makes her look bad or even lie by omission. She was walking around Mrs. Tilney’s room, imagining that she had been murdered by her husband, and when Henry finds her she tells the whole, mortifying truth. Given that Henry lives with two people who pathologically lie (General and Captain Tilney), it would be pretty refreshing to have Catherine in his life.
Catherine believes the best of people until proved wrong. (very Jane B., but she’s also younger). She tries to believe the best of John Thorpe but quickly realises she doesn’t like him and that he must be lying. Isabella Thorpe is harder because Catherine likes her, but she does understand her character by the end. General Tileny is harder still, because he is much better at disguising the truth about himself. The suspicion that he killed his wife seems ridiculous, but Catherine is trying to fit the General into her understanding of the world. She cannot see how someone can have the appearance of goodness and yet be so bad. Given that the perceptive Elizabeth Bennet fell into a similar trap, I am inclined to give Catherine a pass.
Catherine stands on her principles. She thinks it is wrong to lie to Eleanor about having a prior plan and she resists her friend and her brother to set it right. Mr. Allen suggests that riding in an open carriage isn’t wise; she says no. It seems minor because she is only resisting peer pressure, but we can’t expect everyone to have the fortitude of Fanny Price.
Catherine is loyal in her affection, which I think would be attractive to a younger son like Tilney. When Catherine sees Captain T for the first time, she accept that he is hot, but has not a single thought of going after him, “She looked at him with great admiration, and even supposed it possible that some people might think him handsomer than his brother, though, in her eyes, his air was more assuming, and his countenance less prepossessing.” (Ch 16). I wonder how many times in his twenty-six years Henry has had a girl interested in him, only for her to go all Isabella Thorpe and try to use him as a stepping stone to his brother. Catherine never even considers it and unlike everyone else, she doesn’t seem to ask or care about how rich Henry or his brother are. She is disinterested, not mercenary, and that seems like a hard trait to find (unless you’re an Austen heroine).
Catherine is a quick learner, she’s going to catch up. She has gone from living with a family that are, “plain, matter-of-fact people who seldom aimed at wit of any kind; her father, at the utmost, being contented with a pun, and her mother with a proverb; they were not in the habit therefore of telling lies to increase their importance, or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next” (Ch 9), to Henry Tilney, one of the funniest characters in Jane Austen’s collected works. But still she’s not lost! She is intelligent enough to find him amusing. We have an example of her learning on the walk: “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. Delighted with her progress…” (Ch 14).
Lastly, Catherine is interested in improving herself. She doesn’t like reading history, but she wishes she liked it. She misunderstands people so she seeks help in comprehending their motives. She doesn’t resent people who are smarter than her, she is attracted to them. She’s only seventeen for most of this novel, she’ll never be as intelligent as say, Anne Elliot, but she’s not Harriet Smith either.
Catherine Morland: She has many first rate qualities!