Northanger Abbey: Everything you could wish for in a novel!
The Most Attractive Leading Man in Austen: I know you think you want Darcy, but do you really want a man who can’t take a joke? How about instead of insulting you at the assembly, he dances with you and makes you laugh! Surveys reveal that “makes me laugh” is a consistently attractive trait in a future spouse. Besides being extraordinarily funny, he also will willingly take you dress shopping, loves his sister, and reads novels. Shall we agree that he is the perfect man?
Most Relatable Leading Lady: Despite having a good education, are you sometimes a little lost in a conversation? Are you reasonably good looking, passably intelligent, and only somewhat accomplished? Catherine Morland is just a normal, everyday girl who stands up against peer pressure and falls head over heels in love with a cute guy. If she could be born to be a heroine, than all of us can be!
Villians so Well Drawn you Will Swear you met them yesterday! Have you met a guy who constantly brags about his vehicle, talks constantly without actually saying anything, and who assumes that girls will go for him even though he has nothing to recommend him? I have, and so has Jane Austen, its John Thorpe! Isabella is a classic drama queen who is dating a really sweet nerd but angling for the football star. You knew her in high school, I guarantee it.
Highly quotable one liners:
“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
“His departure gave Catherine the first experimental conviction that a loss may be sometimes a gain.”
Great life lessons!“No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.”
“Beware how you give your heart.”
“Our pleasures in this world are always to be paid for.”
and best of all, a passionate defence of reading novels from the Narrator, who continues to be sarcastic and hilarious throughout the novel.
Northanger Abbey, what’s not to love?