Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

I'm a big Jane Austen fan. I read Pride and Prejudice in seventh or eighth grade and like all women fell in love with Mr. Darcy. So reading Northanger Abbey I basically ready to enjoy myself. This novel is supposedly sort of reactionary to Austen's contemporaries like Ann Radcliffe, because there's a lot of "The Mysteries of Udolpho" in the novel. Austen sort of makes it a point to make Catherine (her protagonist) not just common, but a little bit awkward. She's sort of simple I guess, that very classic naivite.  It's one of Austen's least romantic novels, compared to "Pride and Prejudice" or "Persuasion" at least. There's always a focus on reading or education in Austen's books. It makes sense though, since that was one of the number one ways of getting an education or entertaining yourself when you were a woman at the time. Anyway, I wasn't so impressed by Henry. He's kind of a weirdo. You can't tell sometimes if he's being condescending or trying to be charming. It's likely that it's a mix of both. It feels like Catherine is pursuing him more than he is her in this novel too, which is unusual. She at least seems to demonstrate more of an interest than him initially.  When she finally visits Northanger Abbey Catherine proves herself to be incredibly silly. The episode with the drawer seems to be foreshadowing for her inevitable embarrassment. There's also a strange tensions between General Tilney and his children. It's never explained and it makes more sense that that's what made Catherine suspicious in the first place. It's kind of one of those scary traditional families. Regardless I enjoyed it when Henry finally asserted some masculinity, and stood up to his father.