Quixotic?

I met a group of really nice young women yesterday at the local Jane Austen Fellowship. I decided in the end to talk about quixotism and I asked them a lot of questions (see below). They felt, frankly, that they were to some degree, quixotic. They asserted that they were balanced and not mad in their quixotism. They also talked compellingly about the comfort and sense of escape that reading brings them.

How well do we read romance/reality?

I asked them to quickly and parodically create the elements of a romantic comedy. And then I asked them some more questions:

Was it easy to do this?
Is it a form of self-mockery?
Do any of us “go too far” with our attraction to this sub-genre?
Do any of us live life as if it were a romantic comedy?
Are we Quixotic?

Do we know how JA felt about romance?
Do we know how the reader feels about romance?

Is there a connection?
Sense of identification?
Are we partly engaged, partly “above it all”?
Do the foibles of Austen’s characters allow us to indulge in fantasies we know are not true but are comforting in some way?
Have you ever been attacked for what you read/view because others view you as too quixotic?

Can how we relate to /identify with romance effect our own reading?

Why did Austen need to defend the novel (her famous defense in Ch. V of Northanger Abbey)?
Would Austen concur with our definitions of Romantic Comedy?
What would she do with these definitions?
What did she do with them?

Is Austen a snob when she privileges characters according to their ability to read perceptively?
Or is it an accurate way to judge character?
Do we do this?

How well do Northanger Abbey characters read?
What about Persuasion?

What about us?
How well do we read romance?

How do we balance the tension between fictional romance and real romance?
How do we live within our real romances if we privilege fictional romances?
Do we need a little fiction in our real romances?
Or, is this a recipe for disappointment?
Does Austen offer any practical tips?

(They felt that Austen was very helpful, that she creates intelligent heroines who model intelligent attitudes about romance. Most of them felt that they wanted to be like Elizabeth Bennet. Others preferred to model themselves after Elinor Dashwood, Anne Elliot and Fanny Price. They valued patience in romance - something Don Quixote could relate to, I think!).