Jane Austen’s False Friends: Isabella Thorpe, her Precursors and her Successors

Jane Austen had a special gift for portraying reprehensible characters, male and female. Her false friends form a special female subset. This paper will focus on Northanger Abbey’s Isabella Thorpe, the falsest friend of all in Austen’s novels, while also considering some of the predecessors and successors in works ranging from Love and Freindship and Catharine, or The Bower to Mansfield Park.

[@dorothywillis1]

The theme of false friends is certainly one Austen used a lot, although I don't know that I would include Emma in the list. Unlike Isabella Thorpe, Lucy Steele, and Mary Crawford, Emma was not scheming for personal financial advantage. As an example of false male friendship, the relationship of John Thorpe and James Morland certainly qualifies, as the relationship of the Captains Wentworth, Harville, and Benwick gives us an example of true male friendship. In fact, if one searches through Austen's work there are many people who are not just false friends, but false in every way.

[@janeaustensocietyofaustralia]

I agree about Emma - she's not really a false friend, just a misguided friend to Harriet, and she's a wonderful friend to Mrs Weston. Yes, Jane Austen gives us some fabulously false characters, and such a contrast with truly good characters. (Susannah, JASA President)

[@GradKat]

Is the friendship between Thorpe and Morland false? I wouldn’t have thought so. I don’t see what either has to gain from the friendship, other than the pleasure of one another’s company. Just because Thorpe is a clod with the ladies doesn’t mean that other men might not like him.

[@dorothywillis1]

@@GradKat I doubt John Thorpe has a "friend" he has not selected with a view to what he can make out of that person. The fact that he is not smart enough to realize that the Morland family is not wealthy doesn't change the falsity of his professions of friendship.

[@katriaseven1530]

Thank you for uploading this & greetings from Germany 😊

[@heatheralice89]

If Jane Austen was still alive today, she would atleast familiar with the phenomenon of "false friends," which is still very much present within today's society.

[@GradKat]

I don’t agree that Isabella Thorpe is the “anti-heroine” of Northanger Abbey. An example of an anti-heroine, in my opinion, is Lady Susan, from Austen’s story of the same name.