Female friendship in The Coquette.
Female Friendship in ‘The Coquette’
The sentimental novels in the American Literature have long been regarded with great respect as compared to other genres of fiction. One such work is Hannah Webster Forster’s The Coquette which saw an avid reception and became highly famous during the eighteenth century. The Coquette being one of the most widely read works in American Literature is an epistolary, described as a conversation between different women.
The conversational form is a self-conscious debate about their roles as fiancés, wives and mothers, as well as their relationships with each other. Critics would notice that the novel projects two compelling arguments: the plot of women corruption and seduction: a parallel plot revolving around the fate of the powerful female circle, bounded by an ideology of "sisterhood" - which makes the story possible in the most concrete way.
This bond of female friendship is responsible to shape Eliza’s thoughts and actions to some extent and helped the plot of novel to grow in a significant manner. The theme of sisterhood remains prominent with Foster’s work; The Coquette and The Boarding School can be quoted for example. Such bond of female love and enmity is evident at various junctures across popular romantic novels, where women come to the rescue of each other, but somewhere down the line happen to scrutinize each other for the prospect they are vying as women. Jane Austen’s masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice offers a parallel theme of female love and rivalry, where the female characters, though bears enormous love for each other, but are also competent with each other in pursuit of a better match making for themselves.
The way these ladies juggle between different roles in society, show their love for each other, and also never fall shy to step over their own female counterparts for a better prospect would form the crisis of the argument in this paper.
Published in an epoch when gender, class, society and race were
The sentimental novels in the American Literature have long been regarded with great respect as compared to other genres of fiction. One such work is Hannah Webster Forster’s The Coquette which saw an avid reception and became highly famous during the eighteenth century. The Coquette being one of the most widely read works in American Literature is an epistolary, described as a conversation between different women.
The conversational form is a self-conscious debate about their roles as fiancés, wives and mothers, as well as their relationships with each other. Critics would notice that the novel projects two compelling arguments: the plot of women corruption and seduction: a parallel plot revolving around the fate of the powerful female circle, bounded by an ideology of "sisterhood" - which makes the story possible in the most concrete way.
This bond of female friendship is responsible to shape Eliza’s thoughts and actions to some extent and helped the plot of novel to grow in a significant manner. The theme of sisterhood remains prominent with Foster’s work; The Coquette and The Boarding School can be quoted for example. Such bond of female love and enmity is evident at various junctures across popular romantic novels, where women come to the rescue of each other, but somewhere down the line happen to scrutinize each other for the prospect they are vying as women. Jane Austen’s masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice offers a parallel theme of female love and rivalry, where the female characters, though bears enormous love for each other, but are also competent with each other in pursuit of a better match making for themselves.
The way these ladies juggle between different roles in society, show their love for each other, and also never fall shy to step over their own female counterparts for a better prospect would form the crisis of the argument in this paper.
Published in an epoch when gender, class, society and race were