isabella: on the road to riches....

"she ( isabella) saw herself at the end of a few weeks the gaze and admiration of every new acquaintance at fullerton, the envy of every old friend in Putney, with a carriage at her command, and a brillant exhibition of hoop rings on her finger"(pg.99). this is how isabella fancied herself after she found out that James had secured his parents permission to marry her. there's nothing wrong with wanting the finer things in life, but if you were to enter into a marriage for monetary/material gain only then thats when the term "gold digger" starts getting thrown around. i think the term does apply to isabella because we see that even though she claims that she was so in love with catharine's brother James, she readily leaves him for Captain Tilney, whose family is known to have a greater fortune that catharine's. the irony in it all is that isabella's brother has a conversation with catharine in which he states that " to marry for money i think is the wickedest thing in existence" (pg.101), yet that is exactly what his sister is doing. other evidence that supports the claim that isabella is only after money is that catharine states that "when she (isabella) knew what the father would do for them she was quite disappointed that it wasnt more" (pg.171). if she was truely in love with him then the money should not have given her such disappointment, not to mention the fact that the announcment of their marriage seemed to give Mrs. Thorpe great pleasure and considered isabella "lucky", which struck me as an odd way to describe an engagement. this leads me to believe that the Thorpe family isn't that affluent and were looking to form some connection to wealthy families. after reading the letter that James had written to catharine explaining the circumstances of he and isabella's seperation. henry states that he is afraid that the only way that isabella will leave Captain Tilney now is if she meets a Baronet, which im assuming is someone of even greater wealth. this only serves to show that he also sees isabella as only being after the Tilney fortune. the funny thing to me is that the gold digger aspect aside, that catharine was the only one who couldnt see isabella true nature. i dont know if she was just young and naive or she was simply deceived, but i felt that it was pretty obvious. this was noted when she wanted to run and tell isabella to no longer ride in open carriages with men because it was considered improper. the Allens advised her against it because they stated that "isabella was older and knew very well what she was doing" this led me to believe that even they saw through her false pretenses.