One of the main requisites of an eighteenth-century fictional hero was that he be a good brother: attentive, generous, protective, wise. Henry Tilney in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, about whom we know precious little except that he is a tease, qualifies as the hero of the novel by showing that he is an affectionate brother. Indeed, all the brothers in Northanger Abbey display their truest selves in relation to their sisters, as is appropriate in a novel self-conscious about the conventions and clichés of fiction. John Thorpe's boisterous, swaggering selfishness, his adolescent display, is apparent from his first insolent greeting of his mother and sisters.