"The Female Quixote" Book Review by EL

This paper discuses the issue of gender roles in Charlotte Lennox's book "The Female Quixote". It focuses on the main character Arabella and how she manages to make the world revolve around her. It looks at the issue of female empowerment, relationship between the sexes and how these relate to modern day.

From the paper:

"Charlotte Lennox?s ?The Female Quixote? decries the influence of romantic novels on its main female protagonist, Arabella. Like Cervantes? Don Quixote, a reading of romance novels, tales of beautiful women and their influence on men, and of their being the center of the world they dwell in, with everything seeming to revolve around their person, ostensibly seeks to expose the delusions of such women. By putting the onus of such delusions upon the romance, they decry fictions, or at least the genre of fiction that goes by the name of romances. However, a reading of the novels brings forth the great truth that it is neither the romantic fiction, nor its misreading and misinterpretation by the main protagonists of these two novels and others of their kind, but the entire gamut of gender relations that can be held responsible and that needs to be probed further as the cause of such delusions. "