Near the beginning of Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote (1752), Arabella confronts Mr Hervey, a man she banishes from her presence after his attempts to court her. Upon his innocent approach on horseback, Arabella commands her servants to apprehend him. Hervey cries, ‘what do you mean by using me in this manner? Do you suppose I had any Intention to hurt the Lady? – What do you take me for?’ This incident, in part, ridicules the anxieties and expectations Arabella has adopted as a result of her immersion in romance reading. Arabella's response illustrates this as she explains that she takes him, ‘For a Ravisher … an impious Ravisher, who, contrary to all Laws both human and divine, endeavor to possess yourself by Force of a Person whom you are not worthy to serve’. While the novel repeatedly uses humour to critique romance reading and its potential to inculcate unrealistic expectations in women, the contrast between Mr Hervey's innocence in this incident and the genuine dangers found in the novel's subsequent dramatizations of Arabella's intense anxiety about rape, highlights the real danger of sexual violence against women. In dealing with the threat of sexual violence, the novel also fleshes out an alternative notion of female virtue, one that relies on piety instead of chastity.