Dorcasina Sheldon is depicted as a woman with over-romanticized ideals of love, through her perception and understanding of the literature she reads. Tabitha Gilman Tenney quickly illustrates how oblivious her character is within Female Quixotism, which is seen in the early chapters, establishing Sheldon’s credibility and sanity or lack thereof. However, this begs the question of whether her father did or did not value teaching his daughter the basic life skills that she would need to apply to herself and her future relationships. Another underlying factor, her lack of a maternal figure in her life that which would have given more criticism about her life decisions. Due to a lack of either parental figure Dorcasina was cheated and denied the ability of developing a healthy understanding of love, which led her to create her own delusional concepts from what was comfortable to her – books; this would lead her to make troubling decisions throughout her life. Tenney in the opening pages blatantly outlines how limited Dorcasina’s character would be upon her birth. Through the loss of an excellent mother, she was left in the hands of a depressed father who would never come to terms with the loss of his wife. Mr. Sheldon did everything within his means to provide the best education and instructors for Dorcasina, but this would only prove to be of limited assistance to her development. This quote exemplifies how Tenney establishes Dorcasina’s flighty character, “With all these