John Thorpe's taste in novels

Predictably, John Thorpe claims no interest in novels except as an opportunity to brag. He cannot bring himself to care about anything but guy stuff and has so little sensibility about his companion's interests as to miss everything that signifies to her, to use an Austen expression.

Equally predictably, what he does say about novels is shown to be ignorant bluster.

Still, what happens here is not random:

Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her question, but he prevented her by saying, “Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t’other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.”

(Note the introductory sentence that shows us Thorpe's complete lack of sensibility for Catherine's feelings.)

Now look at the two examples Thorpe gives of what he does like and one he gives of what he does not.

First, there is Tom Jones, a book Austen has lightly mocked earlier in the text and, more importantly, not Richardson. The Fielding-Richardson rivalry was a hot one at this time and Thorpe takes what is, for Austen and, my bias, any perceptive reader, the wrong side.

Second there is The Monk and this is also interesting because Ann Radcliffe despised The Monk. She believed it to be a travesty of everything the Gothic novel was supposed to be and went so far as to write The Italian to demonstrate what ought to be done. Can it be a coincidence that, of all the Gothic novels Mr. Thorpe might have singled out as a favourite, it would be this one? If Austen has such a very negative opinion of Radcliffe, how odd that she would have a character as repulsive as John Thorpe like the book that Radcliffe hated so.

And then what Thorpe does not like:

“No sure; was it? Aye, I remember, so it was; I was thinking of that other stupid book, written by that woman they make such a fuss about, she who married the French emigrant.”

“I suppose you mean Camilla?”

“Yes, that’s the book; such unnatural stuff! An old man playing at see–saw, I took up the first volume once and looked it over, but I soon found it would not do; indeed I guessed what sort of stuff it must be before I saw it: as soon as I heard she had married an emigrant, I was sure I should never be able to get through it.”

“I have never read it.”

“You had no loss, I assure you; it is the horridest nonsense you can imagine; there is nothing in the world in it but an old man’s playing at see–saw and learning Latin; upon my soul there is not.

Camilla is not any Frances Burney novel, it is the Frances Burney novel in which she bows to the growing fashion and incorpoartes a little mystery and terror. Again, this is a rather funny choice for Thorpe to mock.