Northanger Abbey
General Tilney
The domineering father
The wealthy, proud master of Northanger Abbey. He is all charm to a girl he thinks is an heiress, and cold when he learns she is not.
General Tilney is fifty-five, a broad, stern military man who runs Northanger by the clock. He insists on eight o'clock breakfast, boasts of his pinery and his modern comforts, and cares a great deal about money and rank. To people he wants to impress he is polite and warm, and to his own children he is rigid.
Catherine's Gothic imagination makes him a villain who has hidden a murder. The truth is more ordinary, and in some ways more unpleasant: he is a mercenary snob whose cruelty comes from vanity and greed, not from a dark secret. Catherine's fears are wrong about the crime but right that something is amiss, since the General is quick to turn on anyone who disappoints his hopes.
“Punctuality is the soul of every well-ordered house! Exactly eight o'clock to the minute.”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
John Thorpe tells the General that Catherine is a great heiress, so the General fusses over her and invites her to Northanger. When he waves away her question about his wife's favorite walk, Catherine reads dark meaning into it.
Later Thorpe changes his story and calls her a penniless adventurer. The furious General sends Catherine away at dawn with no carriage and no farewell. He only gives in to Henry's marriage after Eleanor marries a Viscount and his pride is soothed.
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