Long Walks Through the World Wednesday

[evelyn_b]

What I've Just Finished Reading

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen! It's so good. It's a lot less intense than Persuasion -- Catherine's younger than Anne Elliot, and her anxieties and frustrations and hopes are much more youthful and less heartwrenching -- but it has the same mix of clear-eyed detachment and close emotional engagement that made

Comments

[evelyn_b]

Isabella is such a great character. I think she's almost perfectly self-deluded and hardly consciously calculating at all. I don't get the impression she's conscious of any discrepancy between her words and her actions; I think she genuinely believes that all her friendships are important to her; I think she also believes that she is wounded deeply when they end due to the tragic misunderstandings and surprising inconstancies she seems to keep running into for some reason among the people she befriends.

She wants to be someone to whom friendship is important, and she has decided that of course she is, she always has been. And because she is so affectionate and friendship is so important to her, she can't imagine that any action of hers could be calculating -- it's all just a terrible misunderstanding, and of course dear Catherine will understand, if her heart isn't made of stone!

You could tie it to the novel-reading theme: Isabella's internal narration is constantly assuring her that she is warm, genuine, and indissolubly attached to her friends above all other considerations; her actual actions and their effects on other people are of much less consequence to her conception of herself than this character sketch, just as some authors seem to be unaware of the discrepancy between their description of the character and the character's actions.

John Thorpe's self-delusion is cruder, but seems to operate on a similar pattern. He's capable of telling random lies to convince Catherine to come on the castle trip, but as soon as they're out of his mouth, he'll defend them as the truth. I think they both have a sturdy internal mechanism that allows them to believe instantly in any convenient untruth they tell, and protects their self-concept from any damage by their actions or the opinions and feelings of other people.

In other circumstances, maybe when "advancement" is a less pressing issue, Isabella might settle into a loveable but unreliable friend, loyal as long as nothing ever comes up to test her loyalty, and she will think how nice it is to finally have people around her who appreciate the value of friendship. I'm not sure what circumstances would need to come about for John to become less than 100% an ass, but anything is possible.

[ramasi]

I love this analysis! I guess to me it was less clear because a) who has this little self-awareness? and b) I guess Isabella's self-interest when she looks to marry looks obvious to me, but for her it's not so far from what's perfectly normal, so it makes sense that it wouldn't seem odd to her. I think for me it took Isabella's reaction to Catherine refusing her brother, when it appears important to her to stay friends with Catherine even if she breaks the engagement for me to lean towards "Isabella probably means all of it". Though the letter at the end made me wonder a bit again.

Anyway. I like what you say about novel-reading too. I do love how they all love these books, but still have pretty different relationships to them.