本論文旨在探討夏綠蒂．萊諾克斯《女吉訶德》中的中產階級和浪漫小說兩種意識型態的衝突和對立，筆者希望藉著分析十八世紀英國社會的景況來描繪出當時女性的社會地位及角色，並勾勒出當時所盛行的中產階級價值觀的大致樣貌，以突顯其和書中女主角艾拉貝拉所深信的浪漫小說價值觀的差異和衝突。
在第一章中，筆者從艾拉貝拉的閱讀行為著眼，分析當時社會對女性閱讀的敵對態度，顯示中產階級意識型態中的理想女性形象是無聲又謙卑的，且被限制在家庭內；這和浪漫小說中女性高高在上的地位大相逕庭。第二章接著探討艾拉貝拉的想像及操弄力量，以及浪漫小說中的男女權力結構。在第三章中，筆者視書中的婚姻結局為兩股對立的意識型態的折衷，艾拉貝拉的婚姻一方面滿足了浪漫小說所追求的情愛結局，也同時符合了當時社會視婚姻為商業活動的期望。

My thesis aims to explore the conflict between bourgeois and romance ideologies in Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote in terms of women’s reading, power, and marriage in the eighteenth century. In chapter one, I focus on Arabella’s access to romantic fantasies, offering an overview of women’s position and reading in bourgeois society. Through examining the society’s attitude to and concerns with reading, we can see that in the bourgeois ideal women are voiceless and restrained within the domestic domain, the one that offers no opportunities for the significance that romance heroines enjoy. Also, both women’s motives to read and the society’s eagerness to prohibit it reflect the economical and capitalistic sides of the bourgeoisie. Then, Arabella’s exclusive reading of romance makes her totally subject to it; the canonized romances become the female tradition for Arabella. By comparing the quasi-classicism of romance to the contemporaneity of novel, the discrepancy between Arabella and the outside world is clearly shown. She endeavors to yearn for significance in the prosaic reality which offers no opportunity.
Consequently, chapter two examines Arabella’s power on two levels. Arabella, trying to mediate the gap, constructs her romantic counter-reality with the help of the power of imagination. Arabella manipulates her surroundings to make them meet the requirements of the romantic world, which appears to be an autonomous domain governed by love, excluding the laws, morality, and secularity of the reality. Furthermore, in the love-ruled realm the power structure of bourgeois society seems to be reversed. Women have power over their submissive and constant suitors. The typical images of both genders are reversed. However, heroines’ possession of power is at the expense of rejecting and denying female sexuality and desire. Therefore the autonomy and the reversal of power structure proposed by romance are actually illusive; the power only exists by sacrificing female subjectivity.
In chapter three I will probe into the double-edged role marriage plays. The marriage between Arabella and Glanville can be seen as the compromise between romance and bourgeois ideologies. With the help of her manipulation of the reality, Arabella’s marriage does exemplify the romantic ideal. Glanville is romantically presented as a hero performing countless actions to win his lover. Their marriage is depicted as an amatory union, which is the essential ending in romances wherein love is sanctified. On the other hand, the marriage ending also satisfies the concerns of middle-class society, wherein marriage is considered as a trade and bears an economic mission rather than connecting two lovers. Hence the marriage plot functions as a happy ending that settles the two confronting ideologies.

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………...1
Chapter One
The Conflict between Bourgeois Ideology and Romance Ideology ………………………6
Chapter Two
The Love-Ruled World and the Fantasy of Power ………………………………………47
Chapter Three
Marriage as Compromise and Happy Ending …………………………………………...72
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………...89
Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………………….90

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