“It is a very good story, and I should like to see it performed one day, but I have sometimes wondered if Beatrice and Benedict would truly be happy together,” Miss Morland admitted upon the close of their reading, prompting Mr. Tilney to ask if this doubt “owed more to the contrivance of the narrative or the weakness of the author in telling it?”
“Neither: only I wonder that people who never got along before should find their company so very agreeable later on, when all they have ever practised is quarreling.”
The remainder of their conversation was both an examination of and model for the opposite behaviour, where companionable solicitude for the opinions and feelings of the other replaced quips and wit as the true foundation of a couple’s growing intimacy.
A Kind of Merry Peace (Northanger Abbey)
“It is a very good story, and I should like to see it performed one day, but I have sometimes wondered if Beatrice and Benedict would truly be happy together,” Miss Morland admitted upon the close of their reading, prompting Mr. Tilney to ask if this doubt “owed more to the contrivance of the narrative or the weakness of the author in telling it?”
“Neither: only I wonder that people who never got along before should find their company so very agreeable later on, when all they have ever practised is quarreling.”
The remainder of their conversation was both an examination of and model for the opposite behaviour, where companionable solicitude for the opinions and feelings of the other replaced quips and wit as the true foundation of a couple’s growing intimacy.