The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox

First published: 1752

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Quixotic

Time of plot: 1740’s-1750’s

Locale: London, Bath, and the English countryside

Principal characters

• Arabella, the heroine
• The Marquis, her father
• Charles Glanville, her cousin and love interest
• Sir Charles Glanville, her uncle and guardian
• Charlotte Glanville, her cousin
• Sir George Bellmour, Arabella’s suitor
• Mr. Hervey, a man from London
• Edward, a neighbor’s gardener
• The Countess of ——, an esteemed acquaintance of Arabella

The Story:

The marquis, Arabella’s father, had retreated to the English countryside and married a much younger wife who read romances for entertainment. Their daughter, Arabella, had been born a year after the wedding, but the marchioness, Arabella’s mother, had died in childbirth.

Older now, Arabella finds her mother’s romance books and reads them obsessively. She believes them to be truthful accounts of proper conduct between men and women. No one disobliges her of this notion.

At church, Arabella sees Mr. Hervey, a gentleman from London, and believes that he wants to kidnap her to rape her. She later meets Edward, an attractive and well-spoken gardener on a neighboring estate, and believes he is disguising his true aristocratic identity to be near her. Her cousin, Charles Glanville, arrives and falls in love with her. He soon realizes that Arabella is acting a role and submits because he loves her. Arabella falls in love with Charles but will not admit it.

Arabella’s father dies. Sir Charles Glanville, Arabella’s uncle and (now) guardian, arrives and is confounded by Arabella’s incessant discussion of romance books. He tells his son, Charles, that Arabella will not make him happy unless she changes her ways. Arabella then befriends Miss Groves and interrogates the woman’s servant about her lady’s adventures. The servant divulges the scandalous history of Miss Groves. Miss Groves admonishes Arabella for her rudeness and leaves. Arabella is perplexed.

Charles and his sister come for a visit, and Arabella is overjoyed to meet her cousin, Charlotte. They all go to the races, where they meet Sir George Bellmour.

Later, Arabella fears that Edward now intends to kidnap her. She flees her house, sprains her ankle, and faints. Lucy, her maidservant, runs to find help, and Arabella asks assistance from a stranger. Charles arrives, as does Edward, and Arabella accuses Edward of trying to kidnap her. Edward denies it. She banishes him and then commands Charles to kill him. Charles loves Arabella but is embarrassed by her inability to distinguish reality from fantasy.

Sir George is interested in Arabella, more for her property than her person, and quickly realizes that she is taken with romance books. He resolves to use his vast knowledge of romances to seduce her.

Charles falls dangerously ill. Assuming it is because of his love of her, Arabella commands Charles to live and waits for his immediate recovery. When he does recover, she instructs him in the tenets of romance. While Arabella is later alone with Sir George, he speaks to her in romance terms and she is pleased. When Arabella later speaks this way in front of Sir Charles, Charles is embarrassed and tries to change the subject.

Arabella sees Mr. Hervey and wants Charles to defend her honor, as she thinks Hervey is there to kidnap her. The men fight, but for another reason, and no one is hurt. Later, Sir George speaks in romance terms to Arabella in front of Charles and Charlotte, which incites Charles to chastise George for indulging Arabella’s inappropriate behavior. George vows to quit by degrees but also gives his history, which involves intrigues with many ladies, and Arabella calls him inconstant. Arabella believes that her Uncle Charles has fallen in love with her but she learns from Charles that he was only trying to press his son’s suit with her and that all is resolved.

In Bath, the group befriends Mr. Selvin and Mr. Tinsel. Arabella believes that both men are in love with her and finds, to her disappointment, that this is not the case. Tinsel, in fact, believes her to be mad. The Countess of —— befriends Arabella in Bath and tries to speak sense to her. While Arabella is respectful of the countess’s views and does consider them, she continues in her peculiar ways. The group leaves Bath for London. At Vaux Hall, Arabella vows protection for a woman who is a prostitute. Charles chastises Arabella for her carelessness.

Arabella moves to Richmond, where she befriends a woman named Cynecia, princess of Gaul, who tells Arabella that she is miserable for love of her absent lover, Arimenes. Cynecia then claims that Charles is actually Arimenes. A heartbroken Arabella banishes Charles; he is bewildered but realizes that Sir George is behind the accusation.

Convinced that four men on horseback are going to kidnap her, Arabella jumps into the River Thames. She is rescued but is unconscious.

Charles sees Sir George and also a woman in a veil. Enraged and believing the woman to be Arabella, Charles wounds Sir George with his sword. The woman is Charlotte, and not Arabella, and Charles immediately repents. George asks Charles’s forgiveness for the Cynecia business.

Fearful of her mental state because he just had a strange conversation with her, Arabella’s doctor tells Charles that she might still be delirious. Charles explains Arabella’s obsession with romances and asks the doctor to speak to her. The doctor tells Arabella that romances are untrue, ridiculous, and criminal. Ashamed, Arabella quits romance books forever, asks Charles’s forgiveness for her foibles, and consents to be his wife, if he will have her. They are married in a joint ceremony with Sir George and Charlotte. Both couples enjoy happy marriages.

Bibliography

Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Armstrong argues that women novelists were instrumental to the rise of the middle-class ethos in English society because of their preoccupations with domestic subjects, domesticity, and sentimentality. Arabella, Armstrong argues, is the epitome of sentimentality and the “tamed” woman.

Doody, Margaret Anne. The True Story of the Novel. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996. A provocative look at the political issues surrounding the rise of the novel. Examines why there existed such a push to distinguish between romances and the novel in English society, even though, Doody argues, there had been a symbiotic relationship between the two.

Gallagher, Catherine. Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670-1820. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. This book is essential to any study of Lennox. Gallagher devotes one chapter to Lennox’s place in the history of the woman novelist between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Small, Miriam Rossiter. Charlotte Ramsay Lennox: An Eighteenth Century Lady of Letters. 1935. Reprint. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969. This is considered the best biography of Lennox and is widely cited in scholarly articles. Part of the Yale Studies in English series.

Spencer, Jane. The Rise of the Woman Novelist from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen. New York: Blackwell, 1986. Spencer demonstrates a demarcation in style and theme between women writers of the early eighteenth century—whose themes involved sexuality and power dynamics—and those women writers of the later century—who helped to fashion the new definition of “modest” or “acceptable” femininity in English society. Lennox falls into the latter category.

Todd, Janet. The Sign of Angellica: Women, Writing, and Fiction, 1660-1800. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. This book discusses the precipitating factors that created the stigma attached to the English female novelist: finances, patriarchy, and a rapidly growing reading public.