Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette

 

coquette n. A woman who endeavors without affection to attract men’s amorous attention, esp. by playful arts: a flirt.

 

Reading Note: probably the greatest frustration in reading this novel is the lack of line breaks and quotation marks to set off dialog.  What I do as I read in insert slash marks to set off changes of speaker:

Her omission was not design; it was juvenile indiscretion./ We must, my dear sir, continued she, look with a candid eye on such eccentricities. Faults, not foibles, require the severity of censure./ Far, madam, be it from me to censure any conduct, which as yet I have observed in Miss Wharton….

 

For the novel as a whole:

·        Who is this novel written to and why? What is its moral aim?

·        One of the primary things to pay attention to in this novel is social convention—what may and may not be done, what is appropriate and inappropriate, what can be said, what must NOT be said, in short, what are the rules of the “dating” game? What happens when individuals break the rules or are ignorant of them?

·        What kind of person is Eliza? What does she want out of life, and what are her views of marriage? In what ways are her desires/views safe and/or dangerous for an eighteenth-century woman?

·        Compare and contrast Eliza’s two love interests, Sanford and Boyer. What is appealing about each of these suitors? What’s not so appealing? What does each of them see in (and want from) Eliza? What, if any, common assumptions underpin their varying attitudes towards women, women's roles, women's virtue, and marriage?

·        Why might Foster have chosen to write the novel in the form of letters? What advantages does this form have? What disadvantages?

·        As you read these letters, pay attention to what each letter reveals about its (fictional) author. What does the style in which the letter is written reveal about its author’s character? The content, of course is also important.

·        How are the letters written for their specific recipients? (For example, compare Sanford’s letters to Eliza with his letters written to Charles Deighton.)

·        Pay attention to when the authors dissemble (i.e. mislead their reader). How do we know this person isn’t quite telling the truth? What clues are present in the text?

·        Think about The Coquette in the framework of the newly formed republic. In what ways does Eliza have access to the ideals of this republic? In what ways does she not? (You might compare Eliza’s story with that of Benjamin Franklin.) What does freedom mean to her?

·        How are both coquetry and seduction exercises of power? Who has the power in each of these situations?

·        Be on the lookout for references to artifice, to acting, to drama, and to the stage. What are these references implying about social life in 18th century America?

·        Similarly, keep your eyes out for references to the novel and novel-reading.

·        What happens in the garden/ out of doors? What does the garden represent?

·        What aspects of marriage do the Richmans and the Freemans represent? What makes them good matches? What do they show of the limits of marital felicity?  

 

Day I  1-41

·        How does the tone of Eliza’s writing shift between the first and the second letters? What does this shift in tone suggest about her?

·        How are Eliza’s parents important in this story, both by virtue of how they are present in the novel, and by how they are absent? What might the novel be saying about the new Republic, only recently separated from its parent country, England?

·        Eliza continually distinguishes between reason and fancy (imagination, preference). How is this distinction broadly thematic in the novel?

 

Day II 42-94

·        Pay specific attention to the character of each person in the novel. What are these people like? Beware of over-simplifying them.

·        Are there satisfactory alternative models of male-female relationships held up in the novel which Eliza might emulate?

 

Day III 94-135

·        What is Eliza’s mental state in these chapters? How has she changed? What are the causes and effects of this transformation?

·        Consider the details of Eliza’s seduction. To what degree is the choice she makes a “free” choice? To what degree is she constrained by circumstance? Is she acting of her own free will or is she taken advantage of? Or some combination of the two?

 

 

Day IV   136-169

·        Is Sanford’s regret in LXXII to be believed?

·        In what ways are Sanford’s and Eliza’s fates similar?

·        Who, in the end, is most blamable for what happens to Eliza?

·         What moral lesson does the inscription on Eliza’s tombstone offer? Is this the moral of the novel as a whole?