SOURCE: “Consent, Coquetry, and Consequences,” in American Literary History, Vol. 9, No. 4, 1997, pp. 625-52.

In the following essay, Brown interprets Eliza's plight in The Coquette in terms of her self-determination, or desire to create her own individual identity. Brown points out that women's role in the social contract of the American republic did not necessarily benefit them or even ensure their rights.

When Eliza Wharton, the heroine of Hannah Foster's best-selling novel The Coquette, frankly describes her engagement as the sacrifice of her own “fancy in this affair” (5), she is voicing a standard criticism about the constraints on female and filial consent. Far from expressing her own desire, Eliza's consent represents the subordination of personal desire. In “obedience to the will and desires of my parents,” Eliza discloses, she accepted “their choice” of a husband for her, the “esteemed” Reverend Mr. Haly (5). Her consent to this “alliance” signified no...