I am currently reading Northanger Abbey. I have about 70 pages to go. I am slightly worried General Tilney is going to propose to Catherine Morland. I expect she ends up with his clergyman son, Henry. Catherine seems the least mature of all Austen's heroines. She will be married at 17. She seems too young. I imagine she could be dead at 25, or have twelve children by the age of 40, and nobody would be able to imagine what she was like at 17. She does not seem too bright. Henry Tilney appears to ridicule her in one chapter, or maybe two. There was one chapter in which she tells him little children suffer when they are taught to read and write. In another chapter, Henry Tilney teases her by describing Northanger Abbey as a Gothic mansion with secret passages, as in the books she has been reading. I wonder whether their marriage (if they do marry) might turn out like Mr and Mrs Bennet's from Pride and Prejudice.
I thought the book started off fine, but it has taken a dip now that they have left Bath and gone to Northanger Abbey itself.