The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 83ready to use force to impose his will on her. Quite apart from establishing the
American blueprint for a long line of stories about a young woman affronting her
destiny, this is a subtle acknowledgment of the conflicted position in which young
women, rich or poor, found themselves in the new republic. A more fluid social
position for wealthy women, and relatively greater economic opportunities for the
poorer ones, might persuade them all that they had more control over their desti-
nies. Real control, however, still lay elsewhere. Coming to America does not empower
or liberate Charlotte; on the contrary, as Rowson shows, it simply subjects her to the
discovery of “the dangers lurking beneath” the surfaces of life. This is melodrama
with a purpose. And that purpose, conceived within the sentimental constraints of
the time and expressed in its conventional ethical language, is to give the people for
whom it was written, the “dear girls” whom the narrator constantly addresses, a way
of measuring and meeting their condition as women.
Something similar could be said about a brief novel by Judith Sargent Murray,
The Story of Margaretta (1798), included in The Gleaner essays, in which, in a man-
ner clearly meant to illustrate the author’s beliefs, the heroine Margaretta manages
to escape the usually dire consequences of seduction, thanks to her superiority of
soul and education, and is rewarded with a loving husband. More persuasively and
interestingly, it could also be said of The Coquette, an epistolary novel and a best-
seller for which Hannah Webster Foster was not given credit until 1866. Until then,
the author was known simply as “A Lady of Massachusetts.” In a series of 74 letters,
mainly from the heroine Eliza Wharton to her friend Lucy Freeman, another tale of
seduction and abandonment is told. Eliza is the coquette of the title, but she is also
a spirited young woman. Thoroughly aware of her own needs and charms, she is
unwilling to bury herself in a conventional marriage. She is saved from a match with
an elderly clergyman, Mr. Haly, when he dies before her parents can get them both
to the altar. Another clergyman, the Reverend Boyer, courts her; however, she finds
him dull. She would, she protests, gladly enter the kind of marriage enjoyed by her
friends the Richmans, who share “the purest and most ardent affection, the greatest
consonance of taste and disposition, and the most congenial virtue and wishes.” But
such intimacy between equals seems rare to her. “Marriage is the tomb of friend-
ship,” she confides to Lucy; “it appears to me a very selfish state. Why do people, in
general, as soon as they are married, centre all their cares, and pleasure in their own
families?” For now, she declares, “let me ... enjoy that freedom which I so highly
prize.” Longing for adventure, though, she meets the self-confessed “rake” Peter
Sanford and is entranced. Boyer, discovering the intimacy between Eliza and Sanford,
gives Eliza up. Sanford deserts Eliza for an heiress. Still attracted, Eliza has an affair
with Sanford; becoming pregnant, she leaves home and friends, and dies in child-
birth; and Sanford, now finally admitting that Eliza was “the darling of my soul,”
leaves his wife and flees the country. The customary claim that the entire story was
“founded on fact” is made by the author – and naturally so, since it was based on the
experiences of a distant cousin. So is the customary invocation of moral purpose.
What stays in the reader’s mind, however, is the adventurous spirit of the heroine,
despite its tragic, or rather melodramatic, consequences. “From the melancholyGGray_c01.indd 83ray_c 01 .indd 83 8 8/1/2011 7:54:57 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 57 AM