Finding Eliza: Hannah Webster Foster’s Seductive Libertinism in The Coquette

초록

Hannah Webster Foster’s 1797 novel, The Coquette, is considered as one of the most representative protofeminist works in American literature. That consideration ironically depends on the gender-biased reading of the novel that focuses on its female characters. Such reading merely reiterates the heroine Eliza Wharton’s arrested development under the dualistic view of woman as either a lady or a coquette enforced by other female characters, and confines feminist criticism within its own hermeneutic paradigm. This essay questions the validity of the women-centered interpretation of the novel, and proposes to regard one of the most traditional male figures of the sentimental novel, a libertine, as Foster’s progressive choice of medium to convey a truly protofeminist message. The essay applies the Americanized notion of libertine as a “womanly man” to Foster’s notorious rake Major Peter Sanford, and examines how his unmanly susceptibility to not only physical but more importantly emotional charms of Eliza serves to demonstrate her multifaceted personality as it is in his letters to the other rake Charles Deighton. The essay’s analysis of Foster’s libertine characters aims to illuminate her gender-transcending vision of both women and men as complex individuals.

키워드