#general tilney

On the opposite hand, we have Henry Tilney. He was my Austen hero crush in my twenties; I fell for him because he’s a big nerd. In my thirties, I still loved him but thought he could stand to be little less pedantic. But this time, for the first time, I found myself actually thinking more about Henry’s perspective on events, and it was really amusing:

You’re Henry Tilney, a guy who’s spent most of his adulthood, ever since his mom died, trying to shield his sister from his emotionally abusive dad. The experience has made you The Funny One. You’ve never thought you’d get a lot of romantic attention. But suddenly absolutely everyone is throwing this girl at you. Not just Eleanor, who obviously thinks it’s very funny—but your dad. Your asshole dad is moving heaven and earth to set you up with this random, regular girl, and you cannot figure out why. It can’t be for your happiness, that’s not how this man rolls. And the worst part is, you actually like her. You wish you didn’t, just to spite the old man, but she’s just so (in her terms, may the English language forgive you) nice. And cute. What’s more, she’s guileless, while you’re used to a world full of guile. She’s sincere, while you’re adept at navigating insincerity. And she likes you, which you were slow to believe was real at first, but she has made it very, very obvious. Still, you’re reluctant to make a move (at least not The Big Move) because you can’t figure out what the game is here. Your dad’s game, that is, not Catherine’s game. Catherine has no game, but as soon as you figured that out, your dad swooped in. So finally, you come home, looking forward to seeing her because she just brightens up everything, even your father’s miserable house, but she’s not there. And the other shoe drops, and it all makes sense.

I don’t remember—have either of the screen adaptations of Northanger shown us the scene where Henry goes absolutely ballistic on the General? Because I could see him being very calmly, coldly furious, but I could also see him finally, after all those years of pent-up anger, just losing it. Either way, I want to see Henry tell his father that Catherine Morland is worth ten, a hundred, a thousand of General Tilney.

I got the impression on this read that Henry wasn’t even that mad when Catherine suspected his father of murder and/or wrongful imprisonment. I read him as more bemused than anything. But I was also surprised to find myself aligned against Henry Tilney in this scene.

In my twenties and thirties, I always taught Northanger as a genre study where the protagonist is wrong-genre savvy. Catherine Morland is in a comedy of manners, but she thinks she’s in a gothic novel, and this confrontation with Henry—the most genre-savvy of characters (in a way that aligns him in an interesting way with the novel’s author/narrator, via his wry observations of human behavior and his defense of the novel)—is where she finally realizes her mistake. Henry forces her to examine the actual setting and events of the novel—“Remember the country and the age in which we live”; “Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, you own observation of what is passing around you”—and place herself in the correct genre. This reality check leads to a maturation in her perspective, which leads her toward her happy ending. I think it’s a good reading, and I stand by it.

But on this reread, I was more like… Henry, are you serious? Abusive men murder their wives. Yes, even educated, English, Christian men. Yes, even in the eighteenth century, and the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first. Faking their deaths and imprisoning them for years, I’ll grant you, is less probable. But men very much do murder their wives. And the law doesn’t stop them, doesn’t punish them if they cover it up well enough, and the “neighborhood of voluntary spies” might see the abuse and look the other way until it’s too late. This isn’t just the stuff of fantastic, contrived drama, Henry. This happens. This happens regularly. You have to know that. I mean, come on. Yes, this is your dad and you know the reality of the situation, but looking at it as an outsider? Consult your own understanding, your own observation of what is passing around you. Don’t be such a willfully obtuse man.

I would like an adaptation to show Henry coming to this realization, on his own or with the help of Eleanor—because Eleanor is a woman, and she has to live with the General all the time, so I think she knows.

I mean, Catherine is a girl who takes several encounters to decide she doesn’t really like John Thorpe very much, and who makes excuses for Isabella as long as she can. This is the girl who always gives people more of the benefit of the doubt than they deserve. And she has determined within a few days that Henry’s dad is a stone-cold murderer. That should tell him something important.

I do remember that the 2007 adaptation hints in that direction when Henry tells Catherine her instinct, if not the substance of her accusation, was correct, and that there is “a kind of vampirism” in the Abbey. 2007 was during the Twilight years, which explains the vampire reference, but it’s a good metaphor for what’s happening between the General and his kids. They don’t just loathe him, they’re afraid of him. And whenever he’s around, Catherine notices, he sucks all the fun and joy out of the room.

(Instead of vampires, an adaptation today would gesture to the true crime genre, and a modern retelling should definitely make Catherine a true crime fan.)

In an adaptation, would like to see more of Henry’s maturation from his exposure to Catherine’s character. I didn’t realize it when I first read the novel and Henry was older than me, but he could stand to grow, too. Ideally, for example, people grow out of being the Language and Grammar Police, which is just another type of silliness. And this would lead us up to Henry finally growing enough to break away from his father.

The thought of Henry, twenty miles hence and ignorant of all this evil, almost brought her to tears. How he would feel it when he returned. To have the woman he loved insulted to such a degree; to have been unable to speak a word in her defense, or to even bid her farewell. But his misery would be nothing to the pain she was about to bring her friend. There was nothing she would be able to say or do to soften the blow. Her dear Catherine would be taken from her, from Henry, from every expectation of happiness which they had these past weeks done everything in their power to raise.

With a surprise almost as keen as her distress Eleanor found herself in front of the very door she feared to enter. She stood frozen, staring at the gleaming wood, at last reaching out with a trembling hand with every intention to knock. She did not. She stood with her hand pressed to the door frame, faint of heart and very near fainting entirely. With great exertion she reached for the handle, convinced that if she did not open it at once she would never have the courage, but she had barely summoned sufficient strength when the door was suddenly opened and the startled eyes of Catherine met her own.

“Eleanor!” she exclaimed and the comfort at once gained by her countenance was a stab to Eleanor’s heart. She deserved no such confidence in her. With the greatest effort she entered the room, but even when Catherine had once more closed the door behind her she could not form a single intelligible sentence.

Her friend meanwhile had passed from trepidation to heartfelt concern. She obliged her to be seated, rubbed her temples with lavender water, and hung over her with a solicitude so sincerely affectionate that it the guilt it brought on could only agitate Eleanor further.

“My dear Catherine, you must not—you must not indeed—” she at last brought herself to say. “I am quite well. This kindness distracts me—I cannot bear it—I come to you on such an errand!”

“Errand! To me!”

How natural was her friend’s surprise, and how miserable her own situation. “How shall I tell you!” she exclaimed. “Oh! How shall I tell you!”

All at once Catherine turned quite as pale as herself. “’Tis a messenger from Woodston!”

Eleanor would have given the world to be at liberty to embrace her at that moment. “You are mistaken, indeed,” she assured her, glad to be able to afford her any comfort at all; “it is no one from Woodston. It is my father himself.” Her voice faltered, and she was no longer able to meet her friend’s gaze.

Catherine was silent and for a moment Eleanor struggled for composure. She must speak with firmness, she must be intelligible, and she must not betray any further weakness that might seem to demand her friend’s care at such a moment. She clasped her hands together to cease their trembling and fixed her eyes on where they lay in her lap.

“You are too good, I am sure, to think the worse of me for the part I am obliged to perform. I am indeed a most unwilling messenger. After what has so lately passed, so lately been settled between us—how joyfully, how thankfully on my side!—as to your continuing here as I hoped for many, many weeks longer, how can I tell you that your kindness is not to be accepted—and that the happiness your company has hitherto given us is to be repaid by—” She steadied herself. “But I must not trust myself with words. My dear Catherine, we are to part. My father has recollected an engagement that takes our whole family away on Monday. We are going to Lord Longtown’s, near Hereford, for a fortnight. Explanation and apology are equally impossible. I cannot attempt either.”

“My dear Eleanor,” cried Catherine, in such a comforting accent that Eleanor felt herself obliged to lift up her eyes, “do not be so distressed.” She was attempting to smile, to hide her disappointment, and Eleanor’s heart ached at the cheerfulness of her voice. “A second engagement must give way to a first. I am very, very sorry we are to part—so soon, and so suddenly too; but I am not offended, indeed I am not. I can finish my visit here, you know, at any time; or I hope you will come to me. Can you, when you return from this lord’s, come to Fullerton?”

Eleanor felt as near to crying as she had been since entering the room. “It will not be in my power, Catherine.”

“Come when you can, then,” she said with unwavering warmth.

Eleanor’s shame was too acute to attempt any further reply and she was not yet recovered when she heard her friend thus muse aloud:

“Monday—so soon as Monday; and you all go. Well, I am certain of—I shall be able to take leave, however. I need not go till just before you do, you know. Do not be distressed, Eleanor, I can go on Monday very well. My father and mother’s having no notice of it is of very little consequence. The general will send a servant with me, I dare say, half the way—and then I shall soon be at Salisbury, and then I am only nine miles from home.”

“Ah, Catherine!” she almost cried. “Were it settled so, it would be somewhat less intolerable, though in such common attentions you would have received but half what you ought. But—how can I tell you?—to-morrow morning is fixed for your leaving us, and not even the hour is left to your choice; the very carriage is ordered, and will be here at seven o’clock, and no servant will be offered you.”

At last the shadow of comprehension passed across Catherine’s face. She sat down beside her, breathless and speechless and it was all Eleanor could do to keep herself from grasping and pressing her hand. They might have been sisters, and now who knew if they would ever meet again—

“I could hardly believe my senses, when I heard it; and no displeasure, no resentment that you can feel at this moment, however justly great, can be more than I myself—but I must not talk of what I felt. Oh!” Her composure failed her and all her former agitation returned. “That I could suggest anything in extenuation! Good God! What will your father and mother say! After courting you from the protection of real friends to this—almost double distance from your home, to have you driven out of the house, without the considerations even of decent civility!” The room felt bereft of air and Eleanor could not deny herself one single plea: “Dear, dear Catherine, in being the bearer of such a message, I seem guilty myself of all its insult; yet, I trust you will acquit me, for you must have been long enough in this house to see that I am but a nominal mistress of it, that my real power is nothing.”

Catherine was looking grey and stupefied. “Have I offended the general?” said she in a faltering voice.

“Alas! For my feelings as a daughter, all that I know, all that I answer for, is that you can have given him no just cause of offence,” Eleanor hastened to say. “He certainly is greatly, very greatly discomposed; I have seldom seen him more so. His temper is not happy, and something has now occurred to ruffle it in an uncommon degree; some disappointment, some vexation, which just at this moment seems important, but which I can hardly suppose you to have any concern in, for how is it possible?”

Now Catherine’s eyes were the ones resolutely cast down, and when she spoke it was with a self-command that Eleanor felt was practised wholly on her account and most undeservedly so.

“I am sure,” Catherine spoke quietly, “I am very sorry if I have offended him. It was the last thing I would willingly have done. But do not be unhappy, Eleanor. An engagement, you know, must be kept. I am only sorry it was not recollected sooner, that I might have written home. But it is of very little consequence.”

But this was unbearable. “I hope, I earnestly hope, that to your real safety it will be of none; but to everything else it is of the greatest consequence,” Eleanor burst forth. “To comfort, appearance, propriety, to your family, to the world. Were your friends, the Allens, still in Bath, you might go to them with comparative ease; a few hours would take you there; but a journey of seventy miles, to be taken post by you, at your age, alone, unattended!”

It was an ill-placed indulgence of feeling and it served only to aggravate her. Catherine heard her with very little emotion and said only:

“Oh, the journey is nothing. Do not think about that. And if we are to part, a few hours sooner or later, you know, makes no difference. I can be ready by seven. Let me be called in time.”

She wished to be alone, that was clear enough, and Eleanor would not oppose such a wish. What good could come from further conversation on such a point? She rose from the seat she had so affectionately been urged to take and with a gentle, “I shall see you in the morning,” she quietly left the room.