I should have taken Kevin's advice and not judged the book by its cover. There isn't a single situation within it that involves four women sitting around a table reading books by candlelight in extreme suspense.
I kept on waiting and waiting for it to happen but it never did. I thought the women on the cover were Isabella, Catherine, Eleanor, and Mrs. Allen. Nonetheless I was wrong. But as the conversation we had regarding this was about the power of literature within the story, it still holds true.
There the obvious one, Radcliffe's Udolpho, of which Catherine indulged in a little too much and fell in love with the ideas withing the book. In the initial days of her stay at the abbey it felt as she were longing for something to happen in the way of horror/suspense.
Then there were the washbills that Catherine found in the guest room. It was a bit corny but I found it funny that things were kinda happening to Catherinealmost exactly as Henry had described in his oracle-like predictions he had made in jest on their way to the abbey. The notes had a sense of power in our/Catherine's not knowing of what they were. The fact they they could have contained the whereabouts of the Holy Grail or,as was the the case, nothing at all created a suspense both we the readers and Catherine the character could experience.(133-134)
Then there were the letters written. They themselves became the narrator at times. In this time-period the fact that letters were the dominant and most conventional means of communication, and that one had to wait days for a response alone would magnify the level of importance and suspense. The letters written offered us the emotions of both the writer and the reader. The characters also put forth their personalities in their letters. Catherine and James are truthful and polite, whereas Isabella's and Gen. Tilney's are disingenuous.(159,170,186,198)
I should have taken my own advice. When it comes to the ending of this book I believe that we word "disappointed" has been running of the lips of our class as a whole. I think that I should judge a class by its title. The fact that we are in a "Crime and Literature" class I thought that this would be closer to the aspects of Scooby-Doo, but instead we are left with a very rushed ending while we the reader are left with absolutely no satisfaction. When you see a chest in a book such as this, don't you expect to get some sort of dead body? key opening to a new portal? Or at least a note talking about killing someone? From the reaction of our class we can also say that don't judge a class by its title, because you might just fall flat on your face and be disappointed.
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