Week 6: How come Arabella doesn’t influence any of my actions or decisions as the Heroes and Heroines in her romances affect hers?

“In romances formerly written, every transaction and sentiment was so remote from all that passes among men, that the reader was in very little danger of making any application to himself,” – Samuel Johnson (The Rambler)

“But when an adventurer is leveled with the rest of the world, […] young spectators fix their eyes upon him with closer attention, and hope by observing his behavior and success to regulate their own practices, when they shall be engaged in the like part.” – Samuel Johnson (The Rambler)

The reason I chose two quotes from the same essay is because (1) I didn’t necessarily need a quote from this week’s reading of Female Quixote and (2) the two quotes here are describing two opposing ways in which a novel may affect a person-- there is actually a third reason: I didn't really understand what the thesis of the essay was and thus couldn't grasp the main point he was getting at. Although Johnson categorizes them as how old and new romances affect readers differently, I would give another distinction between the two descriptions as people who identify and people that do not identify with the protagonist (or antagonist if that’s how you see yourself).

The first description explains why it is that the youth wouldn’t necessarily imitate the actions of heroes and villains because people do not usually see themselves as being all totally good or totally bad. In reality, people are both, meaning that our motives generally stem from our own necessities and individual values while action heroes’ motives are usually practically unrealistic.

The other option is when the reader does identify with the main characters within a story. Johnson says it’s because the “adventurer is levelled with the rest of the world.” For example, I guy like me with, an average physique, wouldn’t necessarily adhere to Hercules’s actions, but I would understand the frustration Mr. Glanville has of Arabella because that is something most men go through – being dumbfounded by the (seemingly) irrational decisions and actions of their lover.

Reading The Female Quixote, for me, resembles the former description of not identifying with the protagonist of the story. I would never look to Arabella for dating advice in a real-life situation. On the other hand, when Arabella is reading her romances and absorbing all the ideals presented in those stories, she sees herself in the Heroines of her novels, to her they are, Johnson would say, on the same level playing field. This conforms to the latter description of novels influencing actions of the youth. We see Arabella using the events in her romances as guidelines as to how one should court throughout all of book I. The only difference with Arabella and I is that I do not see my life as being an ancient romance, unfortunately Arabella identifies with that more than she conforms to the real world.