Coming to a Bad End: Sentimentalism, Hermeneutics, and The Female Quixote
Wendy Motooka, Harvard University
Volume 8, no. 2, January 1996
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
Readers of Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote (1752) often leave the book feeling that the heroine, Arabella, has come to a bad end — in both senses of the phrase. Until the penultimate chapter, Arabella is a strong, independent, admirably spirited woman. The final scenes of the novel, however, depict her as defeated, humiliated, and subordinated by a dogmatic clergyman. What had seemed a glorious feminist spark disappointingly fizzles into an unremarkable marriage that returns woman to her proper place. Even if Arabella’s concession to the patriarchy is not lamented per se, the abruptness of her alteration is: “the ending should have been more artistically contrived,” writes one critic, while another speculates that the novel’s sudden conclusion unhappily resulted from the pressures of Lennox’s financial distress. I will argue, however, that Arabella comes to a bad end not through patriarchal pandering or artistic lack, but because of the recalcitrance of the problem described by the novel’s characterization and plot. Arabella, after all, is not only female, but also a quixote — and “female” and “quixote” need not be understood synonymously. Feminist readings that retain the essential femininity of quixotism and the essential masculinity of rationality have difficulty recuperating the book’s disappointingly abrupt and seemingly anti-feminist conclusion. To extend the feminist analysis all the way to the end of the book, we must be willing to reimagine the relations between gender, quixotism, and the novel’s ultimate sentimentalism.
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Charlotte Lennox” include:
The Good Effects of a Whimsical Study: Romance and Women’s Learning in Charlotte
Lennox’s The Female Quixote
by SHARON SMITH PALO (ECF 18.2, Winter 2005-6)
Personal Identity, Narrative, and History: The Female Quixote and Redgauntlet
by EVERETT ZIMMERMAN (ECF 12.2-3, January-April 2000)
Mid-Century English Quixotism and the Defence of the Novel
by BREAN S. HAMMOND (ECF 10.3, April 1998)
©McMaster University, 2015. This copyright covers the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article, including in electronic forms, reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, or similar. While reading for personal use is encouraged, Eighteenth-Century Fiction articles may not be reproduced, broadcast, published, or re-disseminated without the prior written permission of Eighteenth-Century Fiction at McMaster University. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material is not allowed. The copyright in this website includes without limitation the text, computer code, artwork, photographs, images, music, audio, video, and audio-visual material on this website and is owned by McMaster University. ©McMaster University 2015.