My Love; Mr Henry Tilney

Henry Tilney is my ultimate hero, and because I know all my readers are so kind and will forgive me for saying this but I love him even more than Mr Darcy *gasps*! ....Okay, so if your not too offended to continue reading :) I would love to tell you all who this Henry Tilney is (if you don't already know) and why I love him so much!

Henry is the hero of Jane Austen's wonderful novel Northanger Abbey and the romantic interest of Catherine Morland. He is an exceedingly witty, integellent and charming clergyman in his mid 20's and the younger son of the wealthy General Tilney. Sometimes I find it a little hard to acknowledge exactly what it is about Henry that I like so much but I have discovered that it really is his enitre character (I know that sounds vague). I find Henry to be very mysterious, a lot of the time its hard to know what he truly thinks because often what he says is not at all what he means. Henry uses a lot of irony coupled with sarcasm this along with his forementioned wit and intellegence makes great reading! He also has a very sensitive nature and cares very deeply for his sister, Eleanor and also for Catherine. Of course with all this said Henry is not perfect, he is seems to have an opinion on everything and is always considered to be right- something that he delights in. He also has somewhat of an ego which is perhaps quite flattered at times with Catherine's adoration.

One of my favourite quotes from Henry is:

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid"

I am not normally the type of person to rate humour as a quality I like in a hero, but Henry's is so perfect. So just to finish off,  here is a little excerpt of one of my favourite conversations between Henry and Catherine from the novel.

"Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again." Catherine turned away her head, not knowing whether she might venture to laugh.

"I see what you think of me," said he gravely - "I shall make but a poor figure in your journal tomorrow."


My journal!"


Yes, I know exactly what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings - plain black shoes - appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense."


Indeed I shall say no such thing."


Shall I tell you what you ought to say?"


If you please."

I danced with a very agreeable young man, introduced by Mr. King; had a great deal of conversation with him -- seems a most extraordinary genius -- hope I may know more of him. That, madam, is what I wish you to say."

Thanks for reading, I will be continuing with the 'villains we sympathise with' posts shortly :)

What about you, who is your hero? Why?  

Much Love,

Tristans_Isolde xx

*UPDATE (14/05/11):
As you are most likely already aware Blogger has had some issues the past couple of days, the result for this blog was some posts being temporarily taken off. Although the posts were restored the comments were not :) so if you posted a comment on this post I have re-posted it from the notification email I received :)