Customer Reviews

The Female Quixote, or the Adventures of Arabella (Oxford English Novels)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Charlotte Lennox's heroine, raised in complete seclusion from the world by her misanthropic father, grows up believing that romances (of the chivalric kind already satirized by Cervantes more than a century before in the original Don Quixote)are true histories and that the extravagant behavior of the knights and heroes in such texts is the model for modern (18th century)men. Poor Arabella is doomed to be ridiculous! Her world of romance never was and never will be. But although she makes the most absurd mistakes, she is intelligent and strangely wise much of the time: she ignores fashion, she believes in complete honesty and fidelity, she rejects all accomodations to practical, but base, worldly wisdom. She constructs a world of her own in which women, who in the real world were quite helpless and treated as chattel, hold real power.

It is perhaps unfortunate that Lennox was a bit too much under the influence of Samuel Richardson and Samuel Johnson, both great writers but quite conservative in their views about women and their place in society (firmly under the power of men). The ending of the novel seems rushed and sad. Poor Arabella, so delightfully original throughout most of the novel, is "reformed"--as one of my friends said after reading it, and so "she becomes completely ordinary." If it weren't for the ending, the book would get five stars.

I bought the copy of this book that was being sold by Amazon and was published by General Books. DON NOT BUY IT!! It was absolutly terrible. I was charged $9.42, when in reality they should have been paying me to read that trash. In the General Books copy there were errors on almost every page. It made it a struggle to read. For example: page 86 "liNI) of the second book" or on page 69 "Ac-corJirgly". Those are just two of the hundreds of errors. If you don't mind the errors then buy that copy; however, if you intend on keeping this book or using it for any type of school assignment, do not buy from General Books.

I laughed so hard at one point I was almost crying.If you enjoy comedy derived from misunderstandings, and enjoy books from this time period, this one wont let you down.

This is an important book, a pleasure to read. But do NOT buy the Seven Treasures edition. Though it is a few dollars cheaper, it has no introduction, no index, no footnotes. There are many typographical errors - anything Dipthongs come out in weird characters, and there are several mispellings (and this beyond the non-standardized pronunciations; at various points the characters' names are misspelled).

The entire edition looks as though it has been merely cut and pasted from one of the many free online texts onto MSWord, without much of a proofreading. You may as well do the same and avoid paying the 10 bucks + shipping.

I loved reading this book. The heroine needed a butt whupping, really, that's what it boils down to. She had everything and was letting it go for her 2000 year old romance book collection. Finally, a Countess (who then had to bow out) and also a Reverend Doctor gave her a talking to and told her no more jumping into the river just because a man a mile away was riding a horse toward her! After that incident she had to finally see sense and apparently her eyes were also opened to the noble young man who was in love with her the whole time and took a whole lot of abuse from her. The ending was a bit abrupt but the flow and the feel of the story were way ahead of Jane Austen and Ann Radcliffe. And Lennox had subtle and imaginative incidents of bitchery and cunning worked into the story too. And a sword fight. Hooray for Charlotte Lennox, so sorry that she died without a penny, but her Arabella will live in infamy (the Female Coyote).

Written just over a 100 years after the publication of Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE, Charlotte Lennox's THE FEMALE QUIXOTE is interesting for several reasons, not the least of which being that it's a strong, intelligent narrative written BY an 18th century woman ABOUT an 18th century woman. Writing in a wry, humorous tone, Lennox penned a definitive anti-romance, deftly skewering most, if not all, of the pillars of that genre, and seemingly with great delight, never once leaving a doubt as to where she stood on such matters. Lennox intended to pen a delightful little didactic tale centering around the foolishness inherent in lettings one's imagination get the better of oneself, and in this she succeeded admirably. And yet, like the proverbial house, a narrative divided cannot stand, and to be sure, Lennox is working at cross-purposes in her novel. To the more cursory reader, she seems only to be writing a sort of `Dame Quixote;' skewing the mores of Cervantes' earlier novel towards a more female audience, but still drawing the same conclusions as he did about the absurdities inherent in their characters. A deeper reading, however, fleshes out instances within the narrative where Lennox seems to be actually SUPPORTIVE of her main character's quixotry. While on one hand, Lennox seems to be supporting the male patriarchal status quo by bending her Arabella (the female quixote of the title) to the dictates of society and behavior, on the other hand she seems quietly supportive of the power held by the fictitious princesses of Arabella's fancy, and thus Arabella herself. While Lennox's adherence to the former is obvious, and is the tack that she ultimately chooses to emphasize, her support of the latter is more difficult to root out, yet utterly unavoidable in any serious discussion of the work.

THE FEMALE QUIXOTE is not a story in celebration of some new dawn of the strong, intelligent woman. It is not a piece of nascent feminism in the style of a Jane Austen or a Charlotte Bronte, both of whom would pen their own takes on the female condition in the century following Lennox's. No, ultimately Lennox conforms THE FEMALE QUIXOTE to expected 18th century sociological mores, just as she conforms her character to those same mores when, at the hasty conclusion, she has Arabella drop her vision of reality and exchange it for the more socially acceptable value system shared by most characters in the novel. This conclusion is a particularly disappointing development because after pages upon pages of pitch-perfect, minute excoriation of popular romances, Lennox deflates her heroine in one chapter, and then hastily, and almost wholly without the wit which made the preceding chapters so interesting, gives her main characters an artless `happily-ever-after' and simply ends the novel. In her eleventh hour capitulation, Lennox turns her narrative upon itself, weakening its integrity to the point that when she finally gets to Arabella's moment of truth at the conclusion of the novel, she can do nothing but end it straight away before it collapses on itself, writing without any of the flair that characterized the rest of the story. Though Lennox' didactic debt is repaid in full by such an ending, it leaves her narrative in want and the more observant reader skeptical. It is sad to note that in a novel that started off so promisingly, Lennox ends up cheating not only her character and audience, but also any greater purpose the work could have had.

I certainly have no reason to question the importance of "The Female Quixote" as a milestone in the development of the English novel, in particular the branch that led to the works of Jane Austen. The Oxford "World's Classics" edition that I read had an excellent introduction that covered major points regarding its significance, as well as background on Lennox. So the work is without doubt important. The question remains, is it something I would recommend reading for pleasure?

This novel is in essence a one-joke story, a form that sometimes works (the obvious example being Cervantes' original) and usually doesn't. Here, where Arabella's wild assumptions generally lead to rather low-key consequences, the form is not without some amusement, but generally falls well short of hilarity. The French romances that are the targets of lampooning are deservedly quite obscure now, at least in English, so it is essential to have an edition like the Oxford one that supplies copious notes. In fact, I think they may overdo this a bit, but better too much than too little. The structure of the novel also has what can fairly be regarded as defects, such as its abrupt ending. (I won't go into further detail about this, as I'd just be rehashing points raised in previous reviews.) So I'm glad I read this novel, but it isn't something I'm tempted to ever read again.

Personally, I'm no fan of recent trends toward absolute fidelity to the original editions in modern versions. I can live with editions of Austen that preserve her misspellings (although after a while I'm afraid I'm going to start writing "neice"). However, all the capitalized nouns, as if this were German, and proper names in italics in the Oxford "Female Quixote" became somewhat distracting.

Alright, let's get it straight, this is an 18th century novel, not 17th, and while it is tedious at times, for the most part it's very charming and often made me laugh.
I understand that the ending is the "triumph of rationalism over idealism and romanticism," but frankly, I was a little disappointed at the abruptness of it. But who am I to criticize? This is an early novel, and the form hadn't quite been perfected yet, so there are a few loose ends and a large digression in book 6, which was the style of the time.
I recommend reading this with Rasselas, in which Johnson claims the realistic novel is as dangerous to youth as Lennox says of the romance in The Female Quixote.

Although usually a fan of 18th Century literature, I found this book extremely tedious to read. The plot is thin, and situations repetitious. The foolish obsession of the heroine with romantic literature is overdone, and her suitor's devotion to her difficult to fathom as Arabella is vain, selfish, and unreasonable. Not a book I would recommend to anyone.

Okay, so this story is'nt really very easy to read. Its from the 17th Century, but I did enjoy it. And part of the reason I'm writing this review, is because the reviewers on Amazon(for the most part), are missing the point of The Female Quixote. Its kind of ironic that Charlotte Lennox was crowned the first American Novelist, when she only lived in America for about 6yrs... Talk about depserate I guess. But not only are the Amazon reviewers missing the novels point, but also the person whom introduces the book in this edition.

I don't mean to give away the ending, but I studied this in my American Lit. Class at college for like 2weeks. It seems that by this ending we get a few things pointed out:

When Arabella is being talked to by the Doctor, he is giving her reasonable reasons as to why she is wrong. The others just told herit was silly, and in a way reinforcing her beliefs. But this Doctor is showing her why what she believes can't be true. And not only that, but by this ending we see that the females in these times had two options: 1. Be what we see as a Coquette, in Miss Glanville, excepting, unhappy marriage for money, and what society hands them, also is the case with Miss Groves, she has been impregnated twice, and in no inconvience to the man she hopes to marry, which will probrably be an unhappy one as well. She has chosen to rebel against society, and she is forced to live life in hiding. Why? Because doing anything besides doing what you are told to do, and marrying well, is considered abnormal.

Then on the other hand in Arabella's case, by the end of the book she has to options. 1. Admit one is wrong and go into Holy Matrimony with Mr. Glanville or 2. Continue on with her dillusions and most likely end up in a looney bin. Not much of a choice eh? So in a way, the ending and the book as a whole is showing us the choices that these woman had back then. We should be infinitely thankful. Because most woman back then, could not do much.

Someone said that this book was horrible because of the ending, and that it was nothing compared to the novels written a century later by Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. But believe that Charlotte Lennox probably inspired women to think of what their choices our and maybe try to change the way life was for them. Maybe she even inspired Bronte and Austen. Who knows? I love both Austen and Bronte, but I think that definitely Lennox was an important author as well. Credit should be given to where and whom it is do.

So I *hope* that unlike these other readers, you can gain some insight into the world the 17th century women through this book.

My hats off to Mrs. Lennox :D

God Bless & *Enjoy* ~Amy