As I wrote quite a few posts ago, Alasdair MacIntyre can't see that physical strength is a virtue in a Homeric hero such as Odysseus He has similar problems with Penelope who describes as her virtue what MacIntyre would prefer to call her charms.
And, as with strength, we all like to pretend we agree. Something genetically determined such as beauty cannot, we say, possibly be a virtue. And then we all turn around and act as if it were a virtue because it matters to us and matters very much.
And here we have Isabella Thorpe and both Catherine Morland and her brother are attracted to her in a large part because of her beauty. It would be too much to say she is exactly what Mrs. Bennett was when Mr. Bennett first fell in love with her and then married her but we might say the two women are of a general type and James would do well not to marry her.
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