“The Coquette” or the Ambiguities

On the Fiction and the Reality of Independence in the New Republic

Abstract

In The Coquette (1797), Hannah Foster creates the first female individualist in American literature, Eliza Wharton, but places her within the restrictive and punitive confines of a conventional seduction narrative. The heroine's covert manipulation of sexual double-standards emerges as an ill-fated, single-handed fight against larger socio-biological forces, and results in ruin and death. The rhetoric of renunciation in which Eliza's doubtful redemption narrative is couched barely disguises the innovative and disturbing quality of her story.