By Writing The Coquette

7 Pages 1627 Words

How Hannah Foster uses the Coquette to Identify Injustices Towards Women in Society in Support of a Woman’s Social Revolution


In writing, The Coquette, Hannah Foster encouraged women to join together in a revolution against society. Foster believed that, with the gender-biased value-system inherent in early American culture, no woman could freely pursue the life that she desired. Her book made people, particularly women, aware of this oppression that they had faced for so many years. It illuminates the social and moral handcuffs that bound women, in hopes of creating awareness regarding the way that they were treated.
Eliza Wharton is labeled a coquette because of the social and moral characteristics which she is known for: independence, coyness, flirtatiousness, etc., and were features heavily frowned upon by society. She indulged in the pleasures, which an unmarried woman could enjoy, and was known for her social graces. Early in the book, however, she is confronted with a dilemma when she becomes involved with two men of opposite lifestyles and values. Under normal circumstances, with her coquettish personality, she would have preferred to not marry either of them, however, the society which surrounds her, forces her to go against her will and pursue what would be an unhappy marriage. This, obviously, is not what Eliza wanted or needed to do with her life, although her peers suggested otherwise. It is then, that Eliza begins to compromise her free will for the pressures which society places on her, and Hannah Foster explores and criticizes the treatment of women, pointing out many things which are wrong with the society that they lived in.
The independence, which Eliza possessed early in the book, was a great source of strength for her. This, unfortunately, this was not a favorable trait in women at the time, and it is because of this that she does not receive the support of others nor does she know h...