Editing Northanger Abbey (section)

=== The value of reading ===
''Northanger Abbey'' is a story about reading novels.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Baudot |first=Laura Jeanna |date=2011 |title="Nothing Really in It": Gothic Interiors and the Externals of the Courtship Plot in Northanger Abbey |journal=Eighteenth-Century Fiction |volume=24 |issue=2 |page=331 |doi=10.3138/ecf.24.2.325 }}</ref> Laura Jeanne Baudot highlights this point through the discussion of the washing bill Catherine finds in a cabinet at the abbey.<ref name=":4" /> Through the washing bill, Austen draws the audience's attention to the clothes that the fantasy man who marries Eleanor wears.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Baudot |first=Laura Jeanne |date=2011 |title="Nothing Really in It": Gothic Interiors and the Externals of the Courtship Plot in Northanger Abbey |journal=Eighteenth-Century Fiction |volume=24 |issue=2 |page=337 |doi=10.3138/ecf.24.2.325 }}</ref> Austen is forcing the audience to conjure up a cliché image of what the man looks like.<ref name=":5" /> In doing so, Austen is reminding the audience of their current act of reading.<ref name=":5" /> The body of the man reminds the audience of the physical act of reading a book.<ref name=":5" /> It is clear that Austen is defending novel reading.<ref name="auto3">{{Cite journal |last=Wyett |first=Jodi L. |date=2015 |title=Female Quixotism Refashioned: Northanger Abbey, the Engaged Reader, and the Woman Writer |journal=The Eighteenth Century |volume=56 |issue=2 |page=270 |doi=10.1353/ecy.2015.0011 }}</ref> Specifically, Henry Tilney, the hero of ''Northanger Abbey'',<ref name="Brownstein pages 32-572">Brownstein, Rachel "Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice" pp. 32–57 from ''The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 page 40.</ref> is an ideal reader.<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |last=Wyett |first=Jodi L. |date=2015 |title=Female Quixotism Refashioned: Northanger Abbey, the Engaged Reader, and the Woman Writer |journal=The Eighteenth Century |volume=56 |issue=2 |page=268 |doi=10.1353/ecy.2015.0011 }}</ref> Jodi L. Wyett classifies Henry as an ideal reader because of his knowledge about different texts from different genres.<ref name=":6" /> This flips the gender hierarchy by showing men as novel readers instead of women.<ref name="auto3"/> An early sign that Henry Tilney is the hero instead of John Thorpe is that the former likes to read books while the latter does not.<ref name="Brownstein pages 32-572" /> John Thorpe's lack of interest in reading novels, specifically in reading Radcliffe's novels, makes him boorish.<ref name=":7"/> It is hard for Catherine to connect with him because Catherine uses novels as a conversation starter.<ref name=":7" />