I have finished Northanger Abbey and I must admit that it was extremely delightful; a snug little pleasure I kept in the back of my thoughts to get me through those tedious hours at work. I must say, it was much like an old friend waiting for me back home! I feel sad it is now over. Isn’t it amazing how, when you finish the last page of a good book, you feel as though a part of you has died? I must find a new friend and soon!
Sometimes I feel like my life is a Jane Austen novel. A young heroine crossed by love once or twice, pained by thought of losing the one man whom I ever could love, only to be happily resolved in the end… unfortunately, I haven’t quite found my Mr. Darcy or Mr. Tilney yet. If I have, he is hiding himself properly well or in my naïve blindness I see him as nothing more than a Mr. Knightly. I only pray that I will always be candidly aware of all the odious Mr. Wickham’s and the charlatans like Mr. Thorpe.
Any lesson I have learned from this book, I suppose would be to learn the truth about a person before jumping to conclusions. In the words of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, I am mostly a “Sentence first, verdict afterward!” kind of girl. But what folly is there in that mode of thinking!
Dear miss Catherine, how I paralleled your exact thinking when you composed all those dreadful, wonderful fantasies. I was however not duped into thinking Miss Isabella’s nature to be so genuine as you did. I couldn’t imagine putting up with such a vain creature. Oh, but how I did feel most heartfelt pain when you thought yourself cut off forever from the Tilneys. I grieve every girl whose heart must be healed by not an explaining word, but rather the cold, impartial hand of silence and time. Thankfully, your misery only lasted two days. Some of our misery must go on and be endured in what seems an endless eternity.
It is ironic that this story was satirically observing the female novel back in Jane Austen’s day. I couldn’t imagine what Miss Austen could say regarding all the empty, ridiculous novels they have on the shelves nowadays. I, a girl of the twenty first century, find her novels somewhat extraordinary and wish, as Catherine wished, to be more alive in the world of a novel than in the current world. Where everyday life is so much duller than a book, Catherine had the happy fortune of being what she longed to be: in a fantastic novel. Though she may not have realized it, her own story was far happier than real life usually is. She had the love a dear Henry, an adoring sister-in-law, freedom from the ghastly Thorpes, and the blessing of General Tilney. And I daresay if ever there was a concluding “and they lived happily ever after” I suppose I looked for it at the end of Northanger Abbey!
