I remember when I was in college watching a movie with one of my roommates, an international student from Japan, who commented that she hoped someday she would be just as good a wife as the heroine in the movie... and it sort of gobsmacked me, because I had never heard someone say "I want to be a good wife" as a life goal. A good friend, a good employee, a good mother - but not a good wife.

Obviously many of the old "good wife" standards are pretty sexist, and yet if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well, right? (And it's not like "good mother" standards are immune to sexism, anyway!)

Someday I should read The Mysteries of Udolpho! It might be worth reading Udolpho just to be able to reread Northanger Abbey with an extra level of enjoyment, but it sounds like I would get some pleasure out of reading Udolpho for itself, too; all the reviews I've read make it sound like a really weird, baggy book, that is both exactly what you expect and nothing like you expect.