Hannah Webster Fosters The Coquette Essay -- Hannah Webster Foster Th

Hannah Webster Fosters The CoquetteEliza Wharton has sinned. She has also seduced, deceived, loved, and been had. With The Coquette Hannah Webster Foster uses Eliza as an allegory, the archetype of a wo universe gone wrong. To a twentieth ascorbic acid ratifier Elizas fate seems over-dramatized, pathetic, perhaps even silly. She loved a man but circumstance dissuaded their marriage and forced them to establish a guilt-laden, whirlwind of a tryst that destroyed both of their lives. A twentieth century reader may have championed Sanfords divorce, she may have championed the affair, she may have championed Elizas betrothal of Boyers proposal. She may have thrown the book angrily at the floor, shame by the picture of ineffectual, trapped, egg-producing(prenominal) characters. We might see similar reactions when placing Fosters fresh in an eighteenth century con textual matter. But would they be the reactions that Foster judge? Were eighteenth century female readers to see The Coqu ette as an instructional text, or were they supposed to enjoy it without applying it to their own lives? Did she aim to teach her female audience about proper conduct, and to warn about the dangers of the licentious ladies man? The book was a best seller why would this type of text have been so popular?Writing a journal from the side of a fictional eighteenth century reader, a mother whose young lady is the age of Elizas friends, will allow me to employ reader-response tyroism to help conclude these questions and to decipher the possible social influences and/or meanings of the novel. Though reader-response criticism varies from critic to critic, it relies largely on the idea that the reader herself is a valid critic, that her brushup is influenced by time and place,... ...ontagu. http//darkwing.uoregon.edu/rbear/montagu.htmlIntroductions. June 1996.2. Davidson, Cathy. Revoultion and the Word, The Rise of the Novel in America. recent York Oxford University Press, 1986.3. Fost er, Hannah Webster. The Coquette. New York Oxford University Press, 1986.4. Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1982.5. Moi, Toril. Sexual Textual Politics. London Routledge, 1985.6. Murfin, Ross C. What is Reader-Response Criticism? in The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston Bedford, 1991.7. Rabinowitz, Peter J. Johns Hopkins Guide to LIterary Theory http//www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/entries/reader-esponse_theory_and_criticism.html. 1997.8. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. New York Penguin, 1992.