The Coquette

by Hannah Webster Foster, Cathy N. Davidson (Editor)

The Coquette tells the much-publicized story of the seduction and death of Elizabeth Whitman, a poet from Hartford, Connecticut.

Written as a series of letters--between the heroine and her friends and lovers--it describes her long, tortuous courtship by two men, neither of whom perfectly suits her. Eliza Wharton (as Whitman is called in the novel) wavers between Major Sanford, a charming but insincere man, and the Reverend Boyer, a bore who wants to marry her. When, in her mid-30s, Wharton finds herself suddenly abandoned when both men marry other women, she willfully enters into an adulterous relationship with Sanford and becomes pregnant. Alone and dejected, she dies in childbirth at a roadside inn. Eliza Wharton, whose real-life counterpart was distantly related to Hannah Foster's husband, was one of the first women in American fiction to emerge as a real person facing a dilemma in her life. In her Introduction, Davidson discusses the parallels between Elizabeth Whitman and the fictional Eliza Wharton. She shows the limitations placed on women in the 18th century and the attempts of one woman to rebel against those limitations.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, School, Read For School, 18th Century, College, Historical Fiction

169 pages, Paperback

First published February 19, 1797

About the author

Hannah Webster Foster (September 10, 1758 – April 17, 1840) was an American novelist.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

American literature didn't get off to a fast start. Our best efforts to convince the world that Puritan sermons count as literature aside, nobody really got anything decent written until Poe in the early 1800s.

Except there's this, which I found referred to fleetingly as the first viable American novel - 1797 - and I'd never even heard of it, and it's actually pretty great. (It's also based on a true story that apparently had America's panties all moist and knotted, for whatever that's worth.)

The titular coquette, Eliza Wharton, joins a long list of vile women in literature who do gross things like flirt, or show a little reticence about marrying whatever boring Casaubon everyone else decides they should marry. It never works out, so don't get your hopes up. But author Hannah Foster is less interested in indicting Eliza than everyone around her.

Eliza begins the book Emma-ish, headstrong and pleased with herself. The old guy her parents foisted on her has conveniently died before marrying her, and she cheerfully reenters the dating scene, writing that "every thing tends to facilitate the return of my accustomed vivacity." She makes no effort whatsoever to pretend this is a disappointment; she hopes only to find someone a little more interesting this time around. "These bewitching charms of mine have a tendency to keep my mind in a state of perturbation," she chatters. "I don't know how it is, but I am certainly very much the taste of the other sex."

But she's immediately directed toward the reverend Boyer, a safe guy whose love letters are crashingly boring. She prefers the company of Major Sanford, a kindred spirit who unfortunately (and pointedly) can get away with being a coquette himself because he is a dude. When she puts off Boyer, hoping to have just a tiny smidgeon of fun in her life, he storms off in a huff; her friends judge her mercilessly; she's written off as a coquette and abandoned.

As the story progresses and Eliza's options narrow precipitously, her tone changes too - from the vivacity she starts with (and she uses that word like ten times) to a glum desperation. "May my unhappy story," she finally writes, "serve as a beacon to warn the American fair of the dangerous tendency and destructive consequences of...the practice of coquetry."

So the message here isn't that Eliza is a bad person; it's that society sucks, and "vivacity" like hers will be crushed. It's a bummer message, but not a unique one: the literature of destroyed women is rich. This is a worthy entry in it. I'm not sure why it isn't more well-known; it should be.

[Megan Ensign · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Coquette is an epistolary novel based on an actual event that occurred in the "Era of Good Feelings"--that is, the period immediately after the Constitution was ratified. It tells the story, through letters, of a woman's fall from grace.
To contemporary readers, the story might seem a little bland. Really, I consider it very similar to the side plot in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, but if one is able to contextualize the novel, it suddenly becomes a lot more interesting.
I read a critical review of the book, which I liked very much. Ian Finseth basically argues that The Coquette doesn't intend to blame Eliza for what happened to her. Instead, the novel is a major critique on the failure of "republican rhetoric." Throughout the novel, Eliza writes to her friends to solicit their advice on her actions, and she doesn't listen to a single one of them. This is because Eliza functions on a purely emotional level, and the logic that was employed by her friends failed to communicate to her on any comprehensible level (Finseth, Ian. "'A Melancholy Tale': Rhetoric, Fiction, and Passion in The Coquette." Studies in the Novel 33.2 (Summer 2001): 125-159. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Roosevelt University Library, Chicago, IL. 11 October 2007. .)
Another interesting feature of the novel exists within the fact that it was written by a woman. When one looks at the work of Anne Bradstreet, and then looks critically at The Coquette, it becomes apparent that Foster did an excellent job of protecting herself as an author. First, she writes the novel in epistolary form, which essentially ejects the author from the work entirely. Second, she makes it very clear that this story is based on an actual event, which leads the reader to assume that Foster is simply dramatizing a well-publicized scandal instead of commenting on the shortcomings in the new republic.
I'd recommend this novel to anyone who wants to do a fair bit of thinking. If you don't read between the lines, the story is actually pretty bland. If you accompany your reading with some scholarly criticism, it suddenly becomes a lot more interesting!

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh the verbosity! Pages upon pages of superfluous unyielding locution! Mine eyes, oh the nearer upon the brink of succumbing to the deluge of overbearing prose! Let thine end be near! Mercy, let thine end be near!

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classics Cleanup Challenge #17

[Jack Waugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Coquette is a tragedy about the dangers of flirting with sin, an affirmation of Christian faith strengthened through trials, and a social satire about love, passion, and the games people play. What may play like a trite, boilerplate, pre-telenovela work today was actually a groundbreaking story at the end of the Romantic Period, and despite its obvious datedness, the story is no less affecting if one allows his or herself to be absorbed by the meticulously-crafted narrative.

As the story progressed, I found myself rolling my eyes at much of the melodrama, but I think that's kind of the point. Hannah Foster seems to want her readers to be turned off by the drama that so captivates her central characters. This is fine, because Foster's obviously aiming for a commentary on how sterile and meaningless love triangles and romance becomes if one is not in it for the right reasons. Being a flirt is a fool's game, and stringing people along and manipulating them for one's own pleasure invites disaster. Eliza Wharton, the main character, is a maddening protagonist. One could argue that she's not even the protagonist because her character is so deeply flawed. There is a little of Eliza Wharton in many of us, though. Subconsciously or otherwise, many of us love attention, adulation, and affection, especially from those of the opposite sex. Popularity is a commodity, and where that comes from is another discussion, but it should suffice to say that people like being liked, and there's nothing wrong with that. But, like many things that don't have anything inherently wrong with them, it does have a seductive power, and it can turn into something bad. The desire to be popular comes from the love of people and friendship, sure, but it can also come from less edifying places, and the motivations to achieve status can often be selfish, immoral, conceited, and yes, sexual. Foster clearly thinks that it's dangerous to look for romance in the popularity arena, and one very real danger is the sexual immorality ("baser passions," as it's referred to in the book). Romance is not the game of someone looking to be liked by everyone, because the opportunities for manipulation abound, and I think The Coquette handles these themes very well.

I don't want to drop any spoilers, so I'll leave it here. This little-known 18th century work is definitely worth reading, and the fact that such an old literary piece is still so relevant today proves its worth. It's an engrossing, frustrating, thought-provoking emotional rollercoaster, and even though it may seem depressing, the God-glorifying, anyone-can-be-redeemed themes at its core make it endlessly resonant. Obviously, The Coquette comes with a high recommendation from me.

[ashley elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for a college course. Although the main character (the coquette) was INSANELY ANNOYING, it was so hilarious to see a 19th century ROAST FEST play out via letter. It was amaaaazing. And I loved that Foster started out with just the main character's letters to establish who she was, then branched out to everybody else so the reader followed the story from everybody's perspective. Genius! But why the heck isn't this a movie yet?!?!?! It'd be amazing!!!

[John Pistelli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette is a 1797 American epistolary seduction novel and a roman à clef about the death of Elizabeth Whitman (fictionally re-christened Eliza Wharton), a woman of the Connecticut gentry who is impregnated by a married man and who then dies in a tavern after giving birth to his stillborn child. (A fun fact: Whitman's seducer may have been the grandson of the Great Awakening divine, Jonathan Edwards—a possibility that Foster leaves unmentioned.) The Coquette is a novel of primarily historical value, as an early instance of American fiction—here patterned after such European models as those other novels-in-letters of seduction by Richardson and Rousseau—and as a window onto the sexual mores of the upper class in the early republic.

Foster's heroine, Eliza Wharton, favors her freedom to choose over any particular man she might decide to marry; but this desire to enjoy liberty leads her to be mistaken for a mere coquette, and to become entangled by slow degrees in the snares of the decaying-aristocrat libertine, Sanford, a seemingly inevitable fate after she forfeits the love of the pious minister, Boyer. Through this narrative of decline, Eliza's friends Lucy and Julia send her letters that frame the story as a moral tale which urges American ladies to guard their virtue by preferring reason to fancy, domesticity to coquetry, duty to pleasure, and truth to art. Despite feminist critics' understandable desire to read a subversive message into the novel, its characters incessantly moralize and its tendentious plot ensures that the guilty are punished; a novel that spends as many words on flat didacticism as does The Coquette is unlikely to be a radical tract in cipher. The novel is rather an eloquent, if none too complex, statement of civic republicanism, an instance of eighteenth-century American neoclassicism, which is not inimical to an idealist and elite model of proto-feminism, but is hardly revolutionary, even by the standards of its own day:

It is said she has many admirers, and I conceive it very possible that this may be one of them; though, truly, I do not think that she would esteem such a conquest any great honor. I now joined in the general topic of conversation, which was politics; Mrs. Richman and Miss Wharton judiciously, yet modestly, bore a part; while the other ladies amused themselves with Major Sanford, who was making his sage remarks on the play, which he still kept in his hand. General Richman at length observed that we had formed into parties. Major Sanford, upon, this, laid aside his book. Miss Lawrence simpered, and looked as if she was well pleased with being in a party with so fine a man; while her mother replied that she never meddled with politics. Miss Wharton and I, said Mrs. Richman, must beg leave to differ from you, madam. We think ourselves interested in the welfare and prosperity of our country; and, consequently, claim the right of inquiring into those affairs which may conduce to or interfere with the common weal. We shall not be called to the senate or the field to assert its privileges and defend its rights, but we shall feel, for the honor and safety of our friends and connections who are thus employed. If the community flourish and enjoy health and freedom, shall we not share in the happy effects? If it be oppressed and disturbed, shall we not endure our proportion of the evil? Why, then, should the love of our country be a masculine passion only? Why should government, which involves the peace and order of the society of which we are a part, be wholly excluded from our observation? Mrs. Lawrence made some slight reply, and waived the subject. The gentlemen applauded Mrs. Richman's sentiments as truly Roman, and, what was more, they said, truly republican.

Now to aesthetics: is The Coquette a good novel qua novel? Not especially, alas. While a novel in letters might offer its writer an opportunity to "do the police in different voices," Foster gives almost every character the same stiff and formal register. Only the libertine villain, Sanford, expresses himself at all tartly, but even he is mostly frozen in elevated and euphemistic rhetoric: "Good news, Charles, good news!" he writes to his confidant after having finally slept with the unfortunate heroine, "I have arrived to the utmost bounds of my wishes—the full possession of my adorable Eliza." Eliza's friends are hectoring and monitory voices of social consensus, and her would-be lover, the minister Boyer, is an especially insufferable prig—so much so that here even I suspect Foster of some satire. The novel is without physical description or sensuous reality; it takes place in a wholly abstract world of mere social forms, and not in a good way.

As for Eliza herself, she remains something of a blank. This blankness is in fact the novel's one minor glory, as it renders its heroine prophetic of things to come in American fiction. In Foster's rather bold beginning, Eliza starts her first letter by announcing her pleasure that a dull fiance has just died, months after her own father:

An unusual sensation possesses my breast—a sensation which I once thought could never pervade it on any occasion whatever. It is pleasure, pleasure, my dear Lucy, on leaving my paternal roof. Could you have believed that the darling child of an indulgent and dearly-beloved mother would feel a gleam of joy at leaving her? But so it is. The melancholy, the gloom, the condolence which surrounded me for a month after the death of Mr. Haly had depressed my spirits, and palled every enjoyment of life. Mr. Haly was a man of worth—a man of real and substantial merit. He is, therefore, deeply and justly regretted by his friends. He was chosen to be a future guardian and companion for me, and was, therefore, beloved by mine. As their choice, as a good man, and a faithful friend, I esteemed him; but no one acquainted with the disparity of our tempers and dispositions, our views and designs, can suppose my heart much engaged in the alliance. Both nature and education had instilled into my mind an implicit obedience to the will and desires of my parents.

From this defiant beginning, we might expect Eliza to pursue a determined course of rebellion, or at least to vacillate on principle, in the name of ontological freedom itself—one wishes to hear the ghost of Anne Hutchinson rustling among the novel's pages. And Eliza does get some good lines:

She thought Major Sanford too particularly attentive to me, considering what had previously happened. She said it would be noticed by others, and the world would make unfavorable remarks upon any appearance of intimacy between us. I care not for that, said I; it is an ill-natured, misjudging world, and I am not obliged to sacrifice my friends to its opinion.

In such all-too-brief moments, we get a glimpse on the horizon of those antinomians of our literature: Hester Prynne, Isabel Archer, Edna Pontellier—even Captain Ahab and Bartleby! But Foster's intention seems wholly didactic and her heroine insufficiently characterized, suffering mainly from a moral lapse that may be attributed to mere love of sensual pleasure, a motive that would be beneath the dignity of the great American anti-heroines. In his Studies on Classic American Literature (a crazed treatise that would not deign to attend to an early female-authored sentimental novel), Lawrence sets out a manifesto for the critic of American fiction:

The artist usually sets out—or used to—to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Now we know our business in these studies; saving the American tale from the American artist.

The Coquette is best in those moments of Eliza's rebellion when this rescue of the heroine from the author's pious design becomes possible. But these moments are infrequent, and so this is not a great American novel. It does, however, stand at the head of a line of great American novels—those in which the problem of the soul in conflict with society is allegorized as a problem of female desire: The Scarlet Letter, The Portrait of a Lady, The Awakening, The House of Mirth, Quicksand, Sula—which makes it a work of literary-historical interest that students of American fiction should certain peruse. (Here I should say that I read this in the version that perhaps most readers will encounter: that in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, thus testifying to its primarily antiquarian value.)

The Coquette may even have special relevance to today's bewildering sexual morality, its bizarre two-fisted barrage of puritanism and pornography. We are seeing one of feminism's periodic bouts of sex skepticism even as we witness a perhaps unprecedented boom in explicit sadomasochistic pornography by and for women. Hannah Webster Foster would no doubt approve of a puritan stance toward female (and male) sexuality, but Eliza Wharton might well be curious, in the name of art and pleasure and in contempt of the preachers cluttering her pigeon-holes with their black-and-white moral missives, to view all those storied shades of gray.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although she wrote one of the best-selling novels of the early national period and a work widely regarded, even in its own time, as one of the finest early American novels, Foster, like most women writers of that era, has been largely passed over by social and literary history.

I rewatched the US version of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' last weekend. I still prefer the Swedish version, especially since the rest of the trilogy (except for the non-actual authored fourth for some suspicious reason) seem suck in US development limbo hell, but I noticed a commonality between this ultra modern tale of hacking, Nazis, and violence against women this tome from the late 18th century: people go open eyed to murder rather than offend conceptions of polite society. Oh he's a rake, oh he's a wretch, oh he deserves to be thrown to the wolves, but does anyone do it, or better yet, question why so many of these men are bred from birth to become such absolute motherfuckers? If he has money, a title, and prestige, men will slobber all over him, and male slobber necessitates women accepting, even if other women tell her she is in the right to refuse. Such behavior likely has as high a body count today as it did in 1798, judging by the Kavanaugh horrorfest. If Foster's villain seems cartoonish, watch the inquiry of the aforementioned Supreme Court nominee and tell me how far we've come in the last 200 years and how doomed we are as a result.

It is an ill-natured, misjudging world; and I am not obliged to sacrifice my friends to its opinion.

Perhaps it is because this book comes right on the tail end of the 18th century, but it rings much more strongly of Austen than, say, Defoe or Radcliffe. The epistolary form is acknowledgeably more off putting than the novel form, but I still found this book to be much more accessible than I had assumed. This assumption came mostly from my lack of recent indulging in 18th c. lit in 2810, but it seems my reading experiences have piled up into too solid an experience to be worn away by a mere year's worth of reading in other, more modern centuries. In any case, my only struggle came when one character or another waxed too long on self-pitying and/or moralizing throes, which made the multiple occasions where a character called themselves out for moralizing slightly humorous. That meant I could devote nearly all my reading energies to considering the story, and two hundred and twenty years on, it's still harrowing in the way only a self-proclaimed and all too realistic train-wreck can be. I'd call it something that couldn't happen today, but Stormy Daniels has come forward, and no one's succeeded in silencing her yet. Much has changed with regards to social outings and circuses, and much remains the murderous same.

Finishing this book means finally finishing on of this year's reading challenges, which is a welcome relief after so many months of plodding along unfulfilled tracks in so many aspects of my life. I have a solid two thousand pages left to churn through, in addition to the odd school assigned work, but that's a mere three weeks of reading if I stick with it, and while school work got to me last week, I knew that going out of town would do such, and I caught up enough by the end of the weekday run to not be worried. I don't see myself coming to as definitive a conclusion as Eliza Wharton did anytime soon. It's yet another valuable lesson in the vein of patriarchal rape culture, but I am nowhere near as potentially destitute as the average white woman was back then, and pursuit of higher education will only reduce that possibility further. Things could go wildly wrong, but for now, I have things under control.

But I despise those contracted ideas which confine virtue to a cell.

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

From my friend Joy Walsh's review [who I read this book for since she teaches American Lit and was thinking of adding this to her syllabus]:

"Fans of Jane Austen will very much enjoy this little-known tale of warning for young women to carefully guard their reputation against the “rakes” who are out there to conquer and destroy them. The fact that this was a very popular book in its time and that it precedes Jane Austen’s earliest work by at least ten years begs the question of its possible influence on Austen. It was just an ok read for me, but I can appreciate its skilled use of the epistolary form and the ways it depicts the gender expectations of its time."

What this breaks down to it this:
*IF you like Jane Austen [as I do], you will like this book [though the actions of the two main characters will cause you to bang your head against the wall and scream in frustration - something that has not yet happened when I read a Jane Austen book].
* Eliza Wharton [MC #1] is a stupid, silly girl who needed to be smacked upside the head by her mother and friends instead of written letters of gobbledygook. Seriously. She drove me crazy.
*Peter Sanford has his own circle of hell.
*EVERYONE should wish to have such good and devoted [even if they DIDN'T smack her upside the head] friends as Eliza had. Even in the end, they praised her and her friendship and forgave her wayward ways.
*Reverend Boyer, while a bit of a bore, was the most sensible of them all and Eliza was a fool to let that one walk away.

This must have scared the bejeesus out of girls in this time period. Eliza is a good girl who comes from money and connections and her fall from grace is a tough one to watch; I am sure parent's made their daughters read this in hopes to save them from their own sort of "Peter Sanford". He is the worse kind of unsavory character - like all the bad guys from Jane Austen's books plus some rolled into one, and that combo makes him both disgusting and a real degenerate. His letters to his friend made me uncomfortable [and at one point almost sick to my stomach with his glee at how his was "winning"] and this is 2018! I am not sure what it says about his friend either that was so willing to receive such missives from this vile man; I think his morals and character must too have been much like Major Sanford's and therefore he too much have received these letters with glee to live vicariously through his friends conquests.

I initially dreaded reading this book and when I first started, there was a ton of eye rolling etc, but once I got into the story and got the feel of all the characters and the story itself, I started to really enjoy it. It is a sad, sad tale of many things lost and I found it very much worth my time to read it. I am not sure how "modern" folks/students etc would react to it [it is flowery in language at points], but I would hope they would stick with it as the story itself is good and the moral dilemma is clear and the outcome happens, even today, for more than we realize.

[Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had not heard of this novel before, but I had to read it for an American literature class. Overall, it was pretty enjoyable. I really appreciated my class discussions as well; I think they really enhanced the novel and helped explore what it might mean.

Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette is a tragic tale of Eliza Wharton seeking freedom and independence for the first time. Eliza is also being pursued by two men, Reverend J. Boyer and Major Peter Sanford. The story is told in a series of letters, so we get to see multiple perspectives. Eliza hopes to enjoy independence before settling down, but her friends have other ideas of what she should be doing and who she should marry. I really enjoyed how this novel discusses marriage and wealth. In that regard, it reminded me a lot of Jane Austen’s Emma and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

In my literature class, we talked about how this novel is actually a metaphor for the birth of democracy. It was interesting to play around with this idea and what it meant for the story as a whole. We saw Eliza as early America and the male suitors as the two political parties. These ideas were strengthened because we also read some of the Federalists Papers beforehand. I appreciated how Foster seems to use letters as a metaphor for democracy while also considering the effects of social conventions.

[Illiterate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Modern readers may think Foster offers the usual dull tale of thwarted freedom. But clearly she upholds the equally dull morality of her time.

[Bea Pugeda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This tale is for the sluts of the epistolary form and the sluts in general. I’m a slut.

[Niamh · Rating 2 out of 5]

she’s dull , she’s boring

[Sotiris Karaiskos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another one of the first American novels. Another book about the game of love that is describing the morals of the time in relation to marriage and the great dangers of erotic passions that mathematically accurately bring destruction. A book that it has an interest but in general is not something great or original, is rather boring and so instructive that some people even dare to assume that it is an allegory about the dangers that threaten the newly-established United States.

Άλλο ένα από τα πρώτα αμερικανικά μυθιστορήματα. Άλλο ένα βιβλίο για το παιχνίδι του έρωτα που περιγράφει τα ήθη της εποχής σε σχέση με το γάμο και τους μεγάλους κινδύνους των ερωτικών παθών που με μαθηματική ακρίβεια φέρνουν την καταστροφή. Ενα βιβλίο που έχει το ενδιαφέρον του άλλο γενικότερα δεν είναι τίποτα σπουδαίο ή πρωτότυπο, μάλλον βαρετό και τόσο διδακτικό που κάποιοι τολμούν ακόμα και να υποθέσουν ότι πρόκειται για μία αλληγορία για τους κινδύνους που απειλούν τις νεοσύστατες Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες τώρα που είναι ελεύθερες.

[Elizabeth Barto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reads like if the 18th century had reality TV. Or if Jane Austen was American and a little less idealistic. The titular coquette, Eliza Wharton, harbors a surprising amount of modern sensibility concerning her desire to remain single and enjoy the social life that comes with youth and being out in society. Her suitors? The rakish Major Sanford, or the virtuous Mr. Boyer, both of whom she shows relatively equal favor towards. Whether or not society will allow her to follow her volatile whims is a whole other thing entirely. On the whole, deliciously trashy, with just a dash of political allegory (the newly freed young woman desirous of guidance? Yep, it's young America seeking a properly democratic government which exhibits both graces and virtues, get hip to it).

[Faith B · Rating 4 out of 5]

My American Lit professor has declared this to be the first good American novel ever written, and I, for one, adore it. I mean, the ending is upsetting, but I'm pretty sure that the novel had not progressed far enough at this point for this particular story to end happily. I just love Eliza and her coquettish ways, and her stupid friends can go die. Although I did like Lucy whenever she told Eliza to calm the freak down and stop being dramatic. Because the girl is dramatic, if nothing else.

p.s. I freaked out about how old Eliza was when I read the tombstone.

[Abi Emmett · Rating 2 out of 5]

bruh this was a streeetch of a book as well as a lame moral of the story. there were a few times i was captivated by the plot but most of the time it was repetitive🙄 i will say out of the other works written during this time, it has to be one of the more interesting ones

[Ashley (ashleyOutpaged) · Rating 4 out of 5]

*read for school

[x.urlittleflea.o]

read this just to better understand the term coquette

[Sarah Wahl]

I had to read this novel for an early American literature class I'm in right now, and although this genre isn't my favorite, I thoroughly enjoyed The Coquette . One of the things that I enjoyed most when reading this novel is the aspect of female friendship. The book is written in an epistolary style, meaning that it consists of letters written back and forth between characters. The main character Eliza is seen mainly corresponding with her good friend Mrs. Lucy Sumner. Although Mrs. Sumner gives her advice that Eliza ultimately doesn't follow, she still grieves for her friend and the man that leads to her demise. We see this in modern times too, which is heartwarming to see that we really haven't changed. On a similar note, I absolutely loathe Major Sanford and Boyle, but Major Sanford just gets even worse in the last half of the book. While I was reading some of his letters, I was ready to throw my book at the wall. He deserves everything that happened to him and a bit more. Also, I need "young, gay, and volatile" on a t-shirt or bag immediately. Like, that is the most camp thing that Eliza said & I relate to it wholeheartedly.

[marisa :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love victorian drama

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

had to read this epistolary seduction narrative for my American Lit class. every single character in this novel displayed deplorable moral fiber… classic patriarchy!

[Devon · Rating 3 out of 5]

~Reading this for a class~ the fact that this is one of the top bestselling novels of the 18th century is so funny to me. It’s giving what ppl who watch Bridgerton think is actually going on for young, unmarried women trying to navigate men lol. Solid and quick read too

[Avery · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yeah shes alright.

[Nora · Rating 1 out of 5]

read for class. really not a fun read. early american novels didn't have it figured out.

[Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for class, and I actually really loved it. There is something unique to the "Seduction Novel" genre in that this book does not make you hate the "Rake." Since it is based on a real story, I think it was hard to conceal the complexities of love into the stereotypical storyline of a ruined woman. It's my belief that Eliza Wharton was happy to finally be free in the end.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars because it was an interesting text to talk about in class, not because it was a particularly enjoyable read.

"The Coquette" constituted week two of our 'seduction narrative' segment of this seminar, and made more sense to me than "Charlotte Temple" beneath this umbrella term. Eliza Wharton truly is seduced in a way that Charlotte Temple is not (I would call "CT" an abduction narrative, but for some reason, my class didn't want to talk consent); because of this, though, I found Eliza to be an utterly unsympathetic figure. Her real tragedy is that she's quite smart and has all the tools at hand to build a fulfilling life, but ignores her own better judgment and that of all the strong women in this world to sacrifice herself to the absolutely repugnant Major Sanford.

Admittedly, it's hard to read 'interiority' into early American lit (and the novel as we know it was still a quite young form at this historical moment), but I simply could not find myself invested in basically anything that happened in this narrative. It's also an epistolary novel, a structure I'm not wild about, but ultimately, "The Coquette" mimics its title: it teases the reader for over one-hundred tedious pages with the possibility that Eliza might go down either path (the virtuous or the precarious), when in fact you know--as in a horror film--that the slut has to die. The end of the book is a bit more interesting, as things actually happen--rather than the endless back and forth of "will she or won't she" & "why the hell is she getting caught in the garden AGAIN??" of the first two-thirds.

As I said, it's an interesting book in terms of literary history, and my prof had some really fascinating arguments concerning questions of nation (Eliza as the virgin America, faced with two outdated models--the authority & stability of Britain (seen in Boyer), and the rash revolution of France (Sandford))--but unless you're a fan of seduction narratives, early American lit, or are silly enough to be an English graduate student like me--skip it.

[Gwynnie Ball · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never before have I heard the words "rake" and "libertine" used so many times. Poor Eliza.

[Samantha Bartley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for my Women's Literature class. The story was quite interesting, and made me unsure how it was going to end. (I hadn't read the back of the book at this point, which was nothing but spoilers) I was expecting this book to be much like a Jane Austin novel. But it wasn't. For one thing, the story of Eliza Wharton is based of the true story of an Elizabeth Whitman. The story was dramatized of course, but still, I didn't realize that while reading it. Another difference between this book and an Austin novel is its darkness. The first half of the book is rather lighthearted--much so like events that occur in books like Sense and Sensibility, or Emma. But as the book continues, parts become rather dark and depressing. This feeling continues until the last page. I'm not disappointed with this novel. I rather enjoyed it. The author did an excellent job of portraying so many characters with different personalities without them sounding all the same. Some characters like Lucy and Julia I liked. But others like Eliza, Boyer, and Stanford I rather detested. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy late 18th century writings. But for those of you who are expecting another Pride and Prejudice, I'd keep looking.

[Sheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Coquette: or, The History of Eliza Wharton by Hannah Webster Foster

Set in 1797, based on the true story of Eliza Wharton.She finds herself falling for two suitors, Reverend Boyer and Major Sanford. Eliza is well liberated for a woman of her time, and the situation she gets herself into is quite scandalous.

She has her friends and Mother who will all be affected by Eliza's actions. Told alternating chapters, in letters written by and to each other, we know exactly how each person feels.

I found the story enjoyable, yet a bit sad (for Eliza) at the way life was back then for women and how they were treated. I highly recommend The Coquette: or, The History of Eliza Wharton to those who love historical stories (based on true life events).