Northanger Abbey, chapter 24: Confessions of a Teenage Gothic Queen

It’s so easy to joke about Cat styling herself as an amateur sleuth because she thinks her life has turned into a Gothic mystery because … well, just take a look at the sentence I wrote. Nothing, not even seeing Mrs. Tilney’s virtuous “epitaph” written by her husband, stops her from suspecting foul play: “Catherine had read too much not to be perfectly aware of the ease with which a waxen figure might be introduced, and a supposititious [sic] funeral carried on.” It’s an absurd and immature reaction to finding out your friend’s mom died, and by the end of this chapter, Cat finally is brought to sense.

But let’s not dismiss how incredibly serious Cat is as she goes about trying to find clues to a mystery that doesn’t exist. Because she’s not acting this way out of boredom or because Henry isn’t there, but because she’s reacting to the very real tension that exists in Northanger Abbey. And it does emanate from General Tilney: even the simple act of calling for his daughter—at the point when Cat is about to gain access to the unseen gallery from last chapter—strikes “terror” in her heart. For Cat, “concealment [is] first instinctive movement on perceiving him”; Eleanor giving “an apologizing look” as she “dart[s] hastily by her.” Yeah, Cat has wild ideas about General Tilney having starved his wife to death, but is it possible she has been internalizing the stress Eleanor is under, and reacting to General Tilney’s demanding nature in her own way?

Cat decides to venture off on her own, determining that Eleanor is too innocent to be involved in what she believes she will discover. We finally get an idea of what Cat thinks the “proofs of the general’s cruelty” might turn up “in the shape of some fragmented journal.” As in, she figures he wrote about his crime and has left the pages scattered around the abbey (real talk, Cat would absolutely go nuts over escape rooms). She also wants to make said discovery before Henry comes back. Maybe this is a generous reading on my part, but I really wonder if her determination to do all this by herself is an unconscious acknowledgement that she knows what she suspects is wrong—morally as well as practically. 

She heads to the room where Mrs. Tilney passed away, still under the impression that it’s some kind of jail cell in which she was tortured. When she throws open “the forbidden door” and finally sees the warmth and relative cheer of the bedroom, it immediately convinces her that no murder took place there. “[A] … ray of common sense add[s] some bitter emotions of shame” upon this realization, and honestly, it’s about time. Her next job is to get out of there as soon as possible without anyone catching her.

And here comes Cringey Moment #2, just as Henry is climbing the stairs and Cat has no retreat.

Her reaction is hilarious. She’s all, “How came you up that staircase?” and instead of saying something like, I just put one foot in front of the other and here I am, he’s all, Um, this is my house. He very calmly but curiously asks her what she’s doing without his sister around, and you guys, she is so bad at changing the subject. Finally—because she’s also bad at lying—she confesses: “[Your mother] dying so suddenly [...] and you—none of you being at home—and your father, I thought—perhaps had not been very fond of her.”

Imagine having a father like General Tilney: cold, demanding, egotistical. Then imagine hearing someone you’re fond of—and someone you know has a good heart—hesitantly accuse your father of having murdered your mother. Truly surreal. Henry begins by assuring Cat that his mother did indeed die of natural causes, that the illness was sudden, that he and Captain Tilney were both at home when it happened (she was wrong about that), and that his father did indeed love her. “I will not pretend to say that while she lived, she might not often have had much to bear,” he admits (talk about a confession!), “but though his temper injured her, his judgment never did.”

Then, in a justified attempt to talk sense into her, he tells her to “[c]onsult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you.” What have I been saying this entire time about her observation skills? I’m so relieved Henry is backing me up here. In invoking “a country like [England], where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing,” he implies that Cat’s idea isn’t just absurd, but brutal and uncivilized. And as difficult a person General Tilney can be, he abides by the rules and mores of civilized social circles, doesn’t he? 

Cat is thoroughly ashamed and runs away, unable to face Henry after this revelation. But at least she got the one clue she needed.

The Shapard Shelf: Mrs. Tilney is described as having suffered from a “bilious fever,” terminology that sprang from the “four humors” school of medical thought. It’s likely that she died from cholera or typhoid fever. Shapard notes that in Udolpho, “[t]he horror behind the black veil … turns out to be the disintegrating, worm-eaten wax figure of a corpse” (to give you some idea of what Cat was dreading/expecting to find). Interestingly, Shapard appears to have discovered an “oversight” regarding Cat’s level of familiarity with Gothic novels: back in chapter 6, Cat claims not to be well-acquainted with Radcliffe’s works, but in this chapter she has “read too much” of Gothic novel villains, a change in detail that Shapard suggests is meant to “make [Cat’s imaginative suspicions of the General] more plausible and fully developed.”