SOURCE: “Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette: Critiquing Franklin's America,” in Redefining the Political Novel: American Women Writers, 1797-1901, edited by Sharon M. Harris, The University of Tennessee Press, pp. 1-22.

In the following essay, Harris suggests that in The Coquette, Foster satirizes women's social reality and sentimental language in order to expose the sexist basis of the national political ideology.

Crime has no sex and yet to-day                               I wear the brand of shame; Whilst he amid the gay and proud                               Still bears an honored name. 

Can you blame me if I've learned to think                               Your hate of vice a sham, When you so coldly crushed me down                               And then excused the man? … 

Frances E. Watkins Harper, “The Double Standard” (1895)

[Women] are so overloaded with precepts by guardians, who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of character, that their minds are...