... with Isabella's virtues?
Mostly because the story requires it. If we really want to enjoy this book, we need to make the imaginative effort to get inside the story. Not, as Zadie Smith would apparently have it, so that the author can communicate her thoughts to us or we can get inside Jane Austen's mind.* No, we have to do it because we will never really understand this story if we can't imagine what it is like to be Catherine Morland confronted with Isabella Thorpe.
I think Book 1, Chapter VII is the one to do this. Catherine is, as she always is, an oddly passive girl so we cannot attribute what happens here to her character. Everything that happens is because of Isabella's virtue.
Do a thought experiment, go back to when you were seventeen. You are on vacation, away from your friends who know you, away from your parents. You meet this beautiful, flirtatious girl a little older and more experienced than you. Her name is Isabella. She does things that are contradictory but charming. She does things that you know your mother would not approve of and that would lead your friends to think less of you. But they aren't here and haven't you always wondered what it would be like to let go just a little bit? Haven't you wondered if the moral strictures that keep girls from being Isabella are just artificial?
Let go a bit; hang around with her a bit. Let her charm you and confuse you.
* Don't even think of trying this. Jane Austen was the greatest novelist to write in the English language, quite possibly the greatest novelist to write in any language. It's not just that she is smarter than me and smarter than you, she is a lot smarter than us.
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