Northanger Abbey, chapter 17: You Are Cordially Invited

Traveling in this day and age is an expensive and time-consuming undertaking. How often can you change horses on the road? What kind of carriage can you afford? Did it rain last night, causing the unpaved roads to become muddy and impossible to trot on? Are you fleeing town because of your gambling debts and you have to convince your barely-legal side-piece that you really are going to Gretna Green, you promise, but let’s stop in London instead for an undefined amount of time?

 A lot of considerations, as you can see.

So when Cat learns that the Allens have decided to extend their Bath vacation, she’s happy. Back then, it was good sense to stay as long as one could while on holiday to get the most out of the trip. Another 3 weeks in Bath means another 3 weeks of Tilney time …

… or so she thinks until Eleanor tells her that the Tilneys are going home in a few days! Gasp, shock, etc.

Hold on, though, Eleanor’s getting ready to ask Cat a question—and then General Tilney bursts in and asks his daughter if she’s “[been] successful in [her] application to [her] fair friend.” Then he goes ahead and asks Cat himself, hey, do you want to come stay with us for a few weeks? “[W]e can tempt you neither by amusement nor splendor, for our mode of living, as you see, is plain and unpretending; yet no endeavors shall be wanting on our side to make Northanger Abbey not wholly disagreeable.” He said the thing! Actually, he said a lot of things. Actually, he’s still talking. And his daughter barely gets a sentence in.

This seems familiar to me. I recognize it from another novel, Evelina. In this book, the main character is given a hasty and accident-laden introduction into society and along the way meets Captain Mirvan, father of her new best friend, whose coarse manners and wild antics mark him as coming from a lower station in life. One thing that Captain Mirvan and General Tilney have in common is that they never, ever, let their respective daughters talk to the main character. In fact, they rarely let the main characters talk at all. Given that Austen has already name-checked one of Burney’s novels, I really think that General Tilney is influenced partly by the Mirvan patriarch. Because not nothin’, not nobody, will ever get either one to just shut up.

Cat gets permission from the parents to go, and she is ecstatic. She develops a “conviction of being favored beyond every other human creature, in friends and fortune, circumstance and chance.” The Allens led her to Bath, which led her to the Tilneys (and Isabella’s somewhere in there, too), and now the Tilneys will lead her to an actual abbey. “Her passion for ancient edifices [is] next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney”; she imagines the abbey’s “long, damp passages and “narrow cells and ruined chapel,” soon “to be within her daily reach.” 

She’s surprised to learn, however, that the Tilneys are so used to the brilliant Gothic atmosphere of Northanger Abbey that they don’t see it as anything special. If anything, they seem to view it as something of an obligation to maintain, as most of the original building has “decayed” since its glory days “at the time of the Reformation.” Will this history lesson go over Catherine’s head? Probably. But she’s on vacation, so I don’t blame her.

The Shapard Shelf: For those wondering why the Tilneys live in an abbey, Shapard provides context: “The English Reformation of the early sixteenth century led to the dissolution of monasteries and convents, and their sale or distribution by the Crown.” One of Eleanor’s duties as “the mistress of the household” is to “issue invitations,” which is another reason why the general is quite rude in this moment.