The Coquette - Interpretation and Criticism

Interpretation and Criticism

The Coquette received a revival of critical attention during the late twentieth century. It is often praised for its intelligent portrayal of the contrast between individualism vs. social conformity and passion vs. reason. It has also been studied for its relationship to political ideologies of the early American republic and its portrayal of the emerging middle class.

Foster's tale has been read on the one hand as a “novel for providing a subversive message about the ways in which the lives of women even of the elite are subject to narrow cultural constraints” and, on the other hand, as an instructive novel that “comes down on the side of the ideology of Republican motherhood and the women’s sphere, a sphere that celebrated those women who with appropriate sentiment and rationality accepted their “place” in the world. Foster’s epistolary narrative allows for the development multiple points of view and for a variety of readings. Rather than being presented as a one-sided coquette, the development of Eliza’s character through her letter writing allows for a reading of Eliza as both “victim” and “transgressor” of society’s norms.

Cathy N. Davidson argues that The Coquette is not merely a novel about the evils of sin and seduction, but rather “a remarkably detailed assessment of the marital possibilities facing late-eighteenth-century women of the middle or upper-middle classes.” Davidson notes the centrality of Foster’s novel in “countering received ideas on women’s circumscribed power and authority,” positioning The Coquette as “an important voice in the debate on women’s role in the Republic.” In her exploration of the early American novel, Davidson uses the contradictions between Foster’s novel and the moral accounts of Elizabeth Whitman’s death to explore the emergence of the early American sentimental novel:

Eliza Wharton sins and dies. Her death can convey the conservative moral that many critics of the time demanded. Yet the circumstances of that death seem designed to tease the reader into thought. It is in precisely these interstices—the distjunctions between the conventional and the radical readings of the plot – that the early American sentimental novel flourishes. It is in the irresolution of Eliza Wharton’s dilemma that the novel, as a genre, differentiates itself from the tract stories of Elizabeth Whitman in which the novel is grounded and which it ultimately transcends.

In Redefining the Political Novel, Sharon M. Harris responds to Cathy Davidson's work by arguing that The Coquette can be understood as a political novel; she writes, “By recognizing and satirizing, first, the political systems that create women’s social realisms and, second, the language used to convey those systems to the broader culture, Foster exposes the sexist bases of the new nation’s political ideologies.”

One aspect of The Coquette that has garnered significant critical attention is the role of female friendship within the text. In Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature, Ivy Schweitzer discusses the “affective failures” of Eliza Wharton’s female friends and argues that while Eliza can be understood as “the champion of an inclusive, even feminist ‘civic republicanism,’” her friends belong to “the female ‘chorus’ presages the more rigid separation of the sexes and women’s exile from the social to the domestic sphere ushered in by liberalism.” Claire C. Pettengill reads female friendship within The Coquette in terms of sisterhood, which she argues “ a kind of support network that helped a woman establish her identity in opposition to both social and parental authority in an era where both were increasingly challenged.” At the same time, Pettengill insists that the “emotional-disciplinary circuit that reinforces sisterhood is not operating at full (theoretical) capacity.” That is, even though Eliza discusses her life with her friends, they do not fully reciprocate; instead, they respond primarily by criticizing her actions and warning her against further wrongdoing. Pettengill ultimately arrives at the conclusion that “The novel’s bifurcated view of sisterhood, then, reveals some of the ways in which the new nation’s uneasiness over changing economic and social relations, in particular the tension between individual and group interests, spelled itself out in terms of the function of women.”

Other critical studies of The Coquette include Dorothy Z. Baker’s work, which argues that “Eliza’s struggle to control her life begins with the struggle to control language, the language of society that dictates her identity and conscribes her life.” Additionally, C. Leiren Mower makes the case that Eliza “reworks Lockean theories of labor and ownership as a means of authorizing proprietary control over her body’s commerce in the social marketplace. Instead of accepting her social and legal status as another’s personal property, Eliza publicly performs her dissent as visible evidence of the legitimacy of her proprietary claims.”

In 1798, Foster published her second novel, The Boarding School, which was never reprinted and not nearly as popular as The Coquette.

Author of the article “Marriage, Coverture, and the Companionate Ideal in The Coquette and Dorval,” Karen A. Weyler turns the pages of history all the way to the year 1797 to interpret and analyze the work of Hannah W. Foster, in her famous novel The Coquette, also known as The History of Eliza Wharton. Weyler’s article challenges the question of what exactly the role women held, their worth and value to others, at that time in society. In analyzing and finding the answers to her questions, Weyler sets out to investigate through certain indications and topics Foster brings about in her famous novel, The Coquette.

In interpreting and unwinding the novel, Weyler states that The Coquette portrays the classic plot of romance and tragedy between Eliza, Rev. Boyer and Major Sanford, but it also shines a light on certain issues that were starting to arise in that time in society. Since the novel takes place in a male dominant society, where women hardly played much of a role Foster made sure to write and talk about certain issues that many women, like herself were facing; marriage and coverture. Weyler explains that through certain indications we realize that The Coquette highlights many topics such as the importance of marriage, the negative influence and misuse of coverture and lastly the value of a woman being nothing without a man. She breaks it down and explains how one will never or hardly ever read a novel based on a single woman or even skim through a mention of a single woman being content, independent and positively looked upon in the that time and age. Instead the society was shown to portray women as being part of a business partnership or merger and less based upon ones personal inclination. As Weyler writes in her article, marriage was seen as a contractual and public event and it was merely seen to be a political, legal, religious and most particularly, economic status. With marriage, women were given no power over the assets they brought with them, instead under coverture the men legally held ownership of everything given. Not only were the roles of women slim to none, whatever the women brought with them or owned afterwards will never be there’s, because legally its under there husband’s name. Weyler goes further into explaining how these issues were the core obstacles in Foster’s Coquette and the means for Major Sanford and Eliza’s tragedy.

After answering her questions, Weyler concludes her article by mentioning that without the existence of certain topics (coverture and marriage) The Coquette could have ended in a different way, then Foster had choose for it to. The two key factors that could have changed The Coquette in a whole different direction, it seems like they were also very much the causes for why the novel ended the way it did. Weyler closes her article in saying that these issues were very much real obstacles many women were dealing with in that point of history, the readers come to understand that The Coquette isn’t just a novel it’s an unfortunate insight to many woman’s harsh realities.