#ah yes good
Henry Tilney’s unabashed love of muslin and Ann Radcliffe, when contrasted with John Thorpe’s dull-headed dismissal of novels and refusal to shut up about his stupid, blinged-out carriage, is this perfect example of how modes of masculinity that depend on rejecting feminine-coded pleasures are sort of doomed to fail on their own terms. You cannot be a tough, self-assured man when you’re too self-conscious to allow yourself the pleasure of a genre containing such winning titles as Necromancer of the Black Forest just because it’s associated with the ladies.
