My Thoughts/Musings/Ramblings
Ch. 25 (Vol. 2 Ch. 10)
Oh, Catherine, you lovable goon. Catherine has learned her lesson--sort of. Castles don't all have dark and terrible secrets, people aren't angels or devils--well, at least, not in England. Well, not her part of England. D'oh. This is a baby step, then: Catherine learns that her beloved novels aren't real, but still thinks that might really be the way of things in the exotic far off places where they take place (like Italy.) This is characteristic of Austen heroines: they change over time, but not completely. Usually there's a process of becoming less extreme in some aspect of their personalities--Austen is big on moderation.
It's interesting to me that Henry just keeps on being nice to Catherine like nothing happened, rather than the period of awfulness I geared up for. Just as Catherine is learning not to judge real people by the standards of romance novels, I am learning not to judge Austen characters by the standards of all the rom-coms I've seen!
Ch. 26 (Vol. 2 Ch. 11)
In this chapter: Catherine is thoroughly freaked out by the General! Pretty much that's everything that happens--the General says something he doesn't mean, Catherine takes him seriously, and then she gets confused when he doesn't actually mean what he said (like "Oh, we don't need to set an exact time...but we'll definitely be there Wednesday at quarter to one on the dot.") or the General tries to pander to Catherine and she just has no idea how to respond (she loves the village, he apologizes for it; that makes her feel stupid so she doesn't praise the house enough and he gets mad; she actually expresses an opinion and says she likes the cottage and he instructs Henry to keep it, but she's so flustered by that that she refuses to give opinions on things even when she's asked.) General, you are frustrating.
Ch. 27 (Vol. 2 Ch. 12)
Oh, thank goodness Catherine has finally learned a little bit about human nature! If she had fallen for this letter I would have given her up forever.
My Takeaways
Ok: Isabella is sorted, and Catherine is learning--there's not much more to wrap up here! Just Catherine and Henry (cue ominous music...)
Vocab/Clarifications
Ch. 25 (Vol. 2 Ch. 10)
Toward the end of the chapter, we get Henry at probably his most
biting. He and Eleanor are shaking their heads, trying to figure out
what could have happened to induce Frederick to accept Isabella even
though she was engaged; they say that before this he was full of
declarations that no one was good enough for him, and then Henry takes
aim at Isabella: "I have too good an opinion of Miss Thorpe's prudence,
to suppose that she would part with one gentleman before the other was
secured." This means that he's pretty sure Isabella wouldn't let go of
James till she was sure of Frederick--which makes it all the more
bizarre that Frederick would accept her, since she was still actually
engaged when they got together. Finally, he wryly describes Isabella as
quite a lovely sister-in-law for Eleanor--using terms that (as David
Shapard points out in his notes in my edition) describe not Isabella,
but Catherine!
Ch. 26 (Vol. 2 Ch. 11)
Parsonage--p. 430--the house where the town clergyman would live. In this case, that's Henry, who has the "living" (meaning the clergy position) in Woodston.
Ch. 27 (Vol. 2 Ch. 12)
"her tricks have not answered"--p. 444--her plans to get a rich husband have not paid off! (Hah!)
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