Beginning with Miguel de Cervantes’ original quixotic novel, Don Quixote, the truly delusional and idealistic character type travelled across the Atlantic and began to be molded through the writings of a diverse group of men and women. The famous quixotic figure took on many names and personal characteristics, but every quixote can be identified as “a person who is an impractical idealist with lofty visions but little common sense” (Freeman A New Dictionary of Eponyms). Don Quixote, the first of many heroes, fueled his adventures from a madness inspired by great chivalric novels, and each subsequent character chose his or her book by what was popular in the time of their novel’s creation. In Don Quixote’s adventures, knight-errantry books acted …show more content…
One important adaptation of the quixote can be found in Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote. Arabella, the novel’s heroine, is a sheltered young girl who spends the first seventeen years of her life in her father’s paradise on the English countryside. Under the guidance of her father, the Marquis, and the absence of her deceased mother, Arabella’s quixotic folly takes shape through her obsession with romance novels. She spends her adventures mistaking innocent men for ravishers and affronts ladies asking them to repeat their romantic adventures. She remains delusional thanks to her ability to reason using her French romances as evidence, where “By them she was taught to believe that Love was the ruling Principle of the World; that every other Passion was subordinate to this” (Lennox 7). Arabella stands out compared to the female characters of the novel because of her ability to argue her points far better than the men in charge of her, the Marquis and Sir George for example. While Arabella’s feminine self develops her quixotic folly, the imitation of romance novel heroines, her ability to maintain her delusion results from a masculine intelligence, which is her ability to reason and create logically sound