A morality tale about reading novels. Actually quite relevant in some ways. And very ironic. #MAthesis

Dorcasina is a wealthy woman who reads many novels. Her reading habit has caused her to have an unrealistic expectation about romance and marriage. When a young man is hired as a servant in her home, she convinces herself that he is a gentleman in disguise and makes plans to marry him. When her friends, the Stanlys, find out, they put together a plan to get her away from this undesirable match.

I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. The characters were over the top and hilarious. Tenney clearly wrote this in satire of the expectations for women at that time period. The style of writing reflects the time, as there was hardly any imagery, however, which I would have liked, but overall the story is well done. The only struggle I had was the version I had, there were very few paragraph breaks, and made it hard to tell who was talking at times. Overall, very entertaining.

Quirky, hilarious early American novel that follows the magnificently common Dorcasina in her efforts to behave properly based completely on ideas of human interaction she has gleaned from reading novels (thus the reference in the title to Quixote). This bills itself as "a cautionary tale," designed to dissuade proper young ladies from reading novels because they will damage their character, but the very fact that it is a novel itself shows how tongue-in-cheek the whole thing is. One of my favorite satires.

just a wee bit boring

A hell of a lot better than I thought it'd be.