The Female Quixote; Or, The Adventures of Arabella, V. 1-2
1752
The Female Quixote; Or, The Adventures of Arabella, V. 1-2
1752
The great 18th-century satire about what happens when a woman believes too fiercely in the novels she reads. Arabella, beautiful daughter of an isolated marquis, has consumed so many romances that reality itself has become unbearable. When Mr. Hervey glances at her in church, she decides he must be a secret admirer destined by fate. When her cousin Glanville proposes, she refuses him not from disinterest, but because proper heroes in her books never propose so directly. Lennox's masterpiece traces the comic catastrophe of a woman whose imagination has been ruined by fiction, whose every interaction becomes a dramatic scene from a book that exists only in her head. The satire cuts both ways: Arabella is absurd, yet her confinement to reading and romance as the only avenues for female experience is genuinely tragic. A brilliant, sharp examination of how stories shape reality, and who gets to decide what love looks like.
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“For Heaven's sake, Cousin, resumed Arabella, laughing, how have you spent your Time; and to what Studies have you devoted all your Hours, that you could find none to spare for the Perusal of Books from which all useful Knowlege may be drawn; which give us the most shining Examples of Generosity, Courage, Virtue, and Love; which regulate our Actions, form our Manners, and inspire us with a noble Desire of emulating those great, heroic, and virtuous Actions, which made those Persons so glorious in their Age, and so worthy Imitation in ours?””
— Charlotte Lennox
“Two or three Months rolled away, after this Accident, without offering any new Adventure to our fair Visionary; when her Imagination, always prepossessed with the same fantastic Ideas, made her stumble upon another Mistake, equally absurd and ridiculous.””
— Charlotte Lennox
“But Mr. Glanville was in a terrible Confusion, and silently cursed his ill Fate, to make him in Love with a Woman so ridiculous.””
— Charlotte Lennox
“That a man who had once betrayed him, it would be an error in policy ever to trust again.””
— Charlotte Lennox
“The Empire of Love, said she, like the Empire of Honour is govern'd by Laws of its own, which have no Dependence upon, or Relation to any other.””
— Charlotte Lennox
“For if I knew how to please you, I would never, if I could help it, offend.””
— Charlotte Lennox
“Lady Bella went up to her apartment, and betook herself to her Books, which supplied the place of all company to her.””
— Charlotte Lennox
“Since, replied Arabella, that uneasiness has neither made you thinner, nor paler, I don't think you ought to be pitied...””
— Charlotte Lennox
“When they were gone, she found her time hung heavy upon her hands...””
— Charlotte Lennox
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Lennox, Charlotte. The Female Quixote; Or, The Adventures of Arabella, V. 1-2. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-female-quixote-or-the-adventures-of-arabella-v-1-2-ac8afac6-188e-490a-8b63-aeeea90b9751.Lennox, C. (1752). The Female Quixote; Or, The Adventures of Arabella, V. 1-2. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-female-quixote-or-the-adventures-of-arabella-v-1-2-ac8afac6-188e-490a-8b63-aeeea90b9751Lennox, Charlotte. The Female Quixote; Or, The Adventures of Arabella, V. 1-2. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-female-quixote-or-the-adventures-of-arabella-v-1-2-ac8afac6-188e-490a-8b63-aeeea90b9751.
