ABSTRACT
Quixotism is an in-between state, located between illusion and reality, freedom and submission. The chapter discusses the use of female quixotism from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century as an instrument in the hands of women writers to expose the limitations of society and the potential of women. Examples such as Mary Hays’s Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796) and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818), among others, illustrate the defiance quixotism poses to women’s oppression. Contemporary examples in which women’s imagination questions or rejects patriarchal narratives include filmsi—Amélie (2001), Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Sucker Punch (2011), The Library (2017), and Isn’t It Romantic (2018)—as well as recent television shows such as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2014–18).
