Northanger Abbey, chapter 6: Girl Talk

For the two new friends, it’s been a week of balls, Pump-room romps, and furious reading marathons. Catherine, halfway through The Mysteries of Udolpho, obsesses over the secret of the black veil the heroine discovers in the castle, to the point where the idea of never again meeting Henry Tilney doesn’t pain her: “while I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable.” 

Contrast with what Isabella keeps steering the conversation back to: clothes and boys. She teases Catherine about Henry Tilney, talks about wearing the same outfits as Catherine to attract boys, and dishes out erratic advice on how to handle men. “[I]f you do not treat them with spirit,” men won’t “keep their distance.” Even though men “give themselves such airs” and “think themselves of so much importance,” it’s equally important for a woman to determine her “favorite complexion in a man.” Isabella favors “sallow,” which matches with an earlier description of Catherine (and *cough* might be a complexion she shares with her brother James).

I’m going to pause here to point out one thing Catherine and Isabella have in common: in this conversation, both characters come across as pretty surface-level. Isabella’s boy-craziness might be more demonstrably eye-roll worthy, but Catherine’s got a pretty one-track mind here, too. They’re almost talking past each other rather than to each other. The way Catherine talks about novel she’s reading, though endearing to us, isn’t presented as deeper or more important than boys and clothes. It’s like talking about the cliffhanger of your favorite TV show. And her attempts to steer the conversation back to the black veil and “Laurentina’s skeleton” fall flat because Isabella just wants to gab about boys. (Catherine fears that the villain, Montoni, has killed the nun Signora Laurentini di Udolpho in order to inherit the castle; see a spoiler-heavy plot synopsis here.)

That said, Isabella’s comments reveal her insincere facade to an almost comical degree. After bragging about how she championed her “particular friend” Miss Andrews at a previous ball, she compares her friend unfavorably to Catherine: “I must confess there is something amazingly insipid about her.” And of course, when she starts to chase after the two men leaving the Pump-room all while declaring her intention to ignore them, it’s enough to give the reader whip-lash. By the time she declares, “I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them,” you’re left with the impression of a flighty young woman with an attention span of 6 seconds (less if she’s a fast talker).

And while this will never be a pro-Isabella Thorpe blog, some not-uncharitable thoughts spring to mind: being interested in boys, clothes, and scary books is not inherently evil. Isabella is only a year or two older than Catherine and it’s not surprising that they possess roughly the same level of maturity (in some aspects) for now. Though I think I can make the case that Isabella resembles the worst friend in the Austenverse (fight me), I’m less inclined to rage at her. The more you listen to her, the more you realize that this girl has no idea what she’s talking about. (That being said, I feel bad for Miss Andrews.)

Unless you’re Catherine, in which case it’ll take you a couple more chapters to uncover the reason why Isabella has glommed onto you.

The Shapard Shelf: Isabella’s list of horror titles contains “either translations of German novels or tales by English authors set in Germany.” Sir Charles Grandison, a novel Catherine enjoys reading, is a slice-of-life novel that “stands as the polar opposite of horror novels” (and demonstrates that Catherine likes a variety of books). Shapard observes that Isabella’s dramatic turns of phrase aligns her superficially with “sentimental heroines” who were known for their “professions of extreme affection” (the clear implication being that in real life, this flowery language sounds absurd and off-putting).