] I guess Henry's reprimand was indeed necessary to finally dislodge Catherine's persistent fanciful notions.

That's what I'd always thought before this read, but this time around I got something totally new out of this circumstance. While Catherine does finally get that her imaginings were unfounded and fanciful, it doesn't seem to be a total cure. ;-)

As I said, I totally missed this before but was smiling at Catherine's realization that though the novels she read were enjoyable, "it was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the Midland counties of England, was to be looked for." (Emphasis mine)

Still not quite getting it, she acknowledges to herself that Radcliffe, et al might be quite right about the vile nature of human beings in such places as Italy, Switzerland and the south of France but in England people behave much better. ;-) I think JA is telling us that Catherine was somewhat tenaciously clinging to her old ideas about some parts of her own country when she writes, "Catherine dared not doubt beyond her own country, and even of that, if hard pressed, would have yielded the northern and western extremities. But in the central part of England there was surely some security for the existence even of a wife not beloved..." (There I go again--the emphasis is mine) ;-)

This just strikes me as so funny. I really do believe it's JA's way of adding comic relief to what is probably Catherine's lowest point within the novel. And really, who but JA can leave her heroine still flawed, can make her heroine see just a little light but still be in the dark on some points and still make us love Catherine and feel for her in her moment of suffering?