Northanger Abbey, chapter 22: Lifestyles of the Rich & Demanding
Good news: Catherine didn’t perish in her bed during her first night at Northanger Abbey. She wakes up after sleeping in for a bit (thanks to spending a couple hours in terror of some abbey ghost haunting the halls) and remembers, there’s a mystery afoot! Remember the possibly ancient, possibly secret message she found the night before? Cat does! She grabs it and reads … … and it’s just a laundry list and some old bill. Cat is not so much devastated as acutely embarrassed that these were the contents that “had filled her with expectation and alarm, and robbed her of half her night’s rest!” She also realizes that there was nothing special about a lock if the key is out in the “open to all!” The narrator adds a line I will surely steal at some point that speaks to the goodness of her core: “She felt humbled to the dust.” At breakfast, Cat gets another, smaller dose of embarrassment when Henry cheerfully assumes that she wasn’t disturbed by last night’s storm. She moves the topic to...
