Hannah Webster Foster

Reproduction of the original: The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster

The Coquette

Hannah W. Foster

Reprinted in its entirety with a new introduction by Cathy N. Davidson, The Coquette, one of the two "best-selling" American novels of the 18th century, tells the much-publicized story of the seduction and death of Elizabeth Whitman, a poet from Hartford, Connecticut. Courted by two men, then suddenly abandoned when both marry other women, Eliza Wharton (as Whitman is called in the novel) willfully enters into a relationship with one of them and dies giving birth at a roadside inn. Wharton emerges in the story as a realistic character, whose dilemma is treated in a serious fashion.

Amanda Jones

2.5 stars
Read for American lit class

The conversations about this novel are interesting and the analysis of this being an early American novel and how it can represent the early start to America is also intriguing. Yet I found the actual reading experience to be hard with the lack of different voices between the different writers and the repetition of morale. Compared to other works that The Coquette is often group with, I prefer Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Jane Austen’s Emma for early feminism and romance.

The Coquette

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