I just finished reading Northanger Abbey, which I adored. Young Catherine Morland is thrown into Bath society and must find her way through treacherous friends, lies and the mystery of Northanger Abbey. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Henry Tinley is there to help her along the way.
Read two of my favorite passages below:
"But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero into her way" (p. 14).
"And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. Taken in that light certainly, their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could place them in such a view. You will allow, that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each to endeavor to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imagination from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbors, or fancying that they should have been better off with any one else. You will allow all this?" (Henry Tinley speaking to Catherine Morland, p. 70).Sigh.
Whatever happened to the art of conversation?
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