General Tilney's method for throwing out Catherine
It must be granted that only an idiot would believe Thorpe's second story without question, as it requires accepting that the
last story Thorpe told is completely untrue, and, therefore, your source cannot be trusted. So the General is an idiot for believing it — the point is, he
does believe 100% that Catherine is an impoverished, lower-class
Gold Digger to whom he owes no respect. Accepting this as true from his perspective, when he throws Catherine out:
- Why make up the cover story about a sudden engagement? It's clear he wants to be as rude and insulting to her as possible (which he succeeds at), so why make a flimsy excuse for why he's doing it? Either he would want to get rid of her without seeming rude, or he would want to be as rude as possible — making an excuse and everything else he does to treat her as rudely as possible would seem to have opposing motives.
- Maybe he wants a "plausible deniability" about his own actions (either for his own conscience or to parade before his neighbors): "She was lying scum and trying to entrap my son, but I was gracious enough to give her a polite excuse for removing her from my house!"
- Why have Eleanor give her the message? Shouldn't he want to keep his daughter as far away from the girl as possible?
- Perhaps to imagine Eleanor struggling to tell Catherine that she has to leave? He's a pretty big Jerkass to Eleanor on a regular basis.
- It might be a social thing - it might be more socially appropriate for him to send the only woman (Eleanor) who lives at the house to deliver the message to Catherine instead of doing it himself (in the ITV film version, he throws her out in the middle of the night, so it doesn't seem appropriate for a man who just show up a girl's bedroom and yell at her to get out of his house). Also, maybe the General can't stand the idea of even looking at Catherine, either because he's disgusted at the thought that (from his point of view) she lied about her social status or because now that he thinks she's destitute, she's so utterly beneath him that he shouldn't have to speak to her directly. In any case, he's a jerkass.
- I agree that it's likely he can't stand to look at her.
- Why not tell Catherine and/or Eleanor the truth? From his point of view, there's nothing wrong with what he's doing — he's perfectly justified in throwing someone who deserves no respect and has been deceiving him and his son out of his house, so why keep it a secret? Why not tell Catherine he knows the truth about her and that he's not going to fall for it anymore? Why not tell Eleanor what scum her friend really is? He has no qualms about telling Henry.
- Given how oppressive General Tilney is, Eleanor might not have had the nerve to ask him directly what the real reason for evicting Catherine so abruptly was. Henry might have only gotten the explanation because he confronted his father directly.
- Again, he might not be able to stand looking at Catherine, he sometimes treats Eleanor like a servant (and rarely ever concerns himself with her feelings), AND he thinks she should just obey him without question. He also has had a chance to cool down some by the time Henry comes home.
Eleanor living at Northanger
Eleanor's miserable living at Northanger, particularly after Henry is "banished." But Henry has his own home (Woodston). Would Eleanor have been able to live in her brother's house instead of her father's? Would the law have prevented her from moving in with her brother if her father didn't consent?
- A young lady at the time would properly live with her guardian until she married—as much as Eleanor probably wants to live with Henry, the social mores (if not actually the law) prevent her from moving in with him while her father's still alive. Also, she's dependent on her father for a dowry, which she basically needs to get married.
