...it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books—or at least books of information—for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventual lives....
...She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed! But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out. There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no—not even a baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door—not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.
—Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Catherine obviously didn't have the force of imagination that Don Quixote had—otherwise she would have encountered foundlings aplenty in her vicinity—but she seems to give it a good try. I've only read Northanger Abbey once and have almost no memory of it, so I thought I'd give it another read. It looks like it will make an interesting complement to Don Quixote.
