I said "mostly" because ...

... there is more here than just the story.

On paper we can forget what Isabella is like because, in our imaginations, we can construct pictures of our behaviour that have nothing to do with the real world.

Way back in 1980, my first year at university, I listened to a woman named Jillian expound such a construction. The fact that women shaved their legs bothered some feminists at the time. This was said to be something that was imposed on women by men. Jillian believed we would soon live in a world in which women stopped shaving.

Jillian was 18 and was wearing a pastel T-shirt and jeans as we talked. I had mixed feelings because I thought she was really beautiful and I didn't want her to stop shaving her legs (even though I'd never seen them). I knew she shaved because she had told me in the course of the conversation that she still did. She was quite sure, however, that most women would soon respond to their new freedoms by stopping and she was going to be one of them. It wasn't what I would have chosen but I was ready to go along with it; morally, I didn't feel I had any right to object.

Within three years of our having that conversation, before we graduated, I was at a cottage with Jillian and some other friends and I overheard her say to another woman that she was paying to have wax poured on her pubic hair in order that it could be pulled out by the roots. Needless to say, she never stopped shaving her legs. And yet, I'm sure that she believed every word as she told me she and other women would soon stop shaving their legs back in 1980.

I often think of Jillian when I try and dramatize Isabella to myself. Consider the difference between Isabella and her brother John. John is obnoxious in a way that most guys are obnoxious at some point in their lives. Most change, although a significant subset persist in being jerks all their lives and we cannot help but conclude, along with Catherine, that John Thorpe wil be one of these.

John's vices disqualify him with women, although not with other men. Isabella is still getting away with it at the end of the story. And that is because she has virtues her brother des not. Catherine is aware of Isabella's vices but continues to be attracted because Isabella has virtues. However much we might like to pretend otherwise, we'd enjoy Isabella's company if we met her and she showed an interest in us. In the abstract we can dismiss her but make her breathe and we cannot.

Catherine only moves on because she finds someone even better. Someone more admirable, more worth emulating in Miss Tilney and her brother.