History/GWS 249 Reading Guide
Masquerade: An Eighteenth-century “Best Selling” Novel as History
Text:
- Hannah Foster (1758-1840), The Coquette, or The History of Eliza Wharton; A Novel; Founded on Fact (1797).
See also:
- Salem, July 29, "Last Friday...." Salem Mercury, II, 94, p.3 (Salem, July 29, 1788).
New York, Sept. 3, "Extract of a letter from Boston," Independent Chronicle, XX, 1037, p.3 (Boston, Sept. 11, 1788). - Mary E. Crawford, "A Pre-Revolutionary Belle," The Romance of Old New England Churches, (Boston, 1903), 11-43.
Further reading:
- Eliza Southgate (b. 1783), Letters (1800-2), in Nancy Cott, Root of Bitterness, 103-110.
Questions:
- To what audience was Foster writing? How did her perceived audience shape her telling of the story? To what extent is the story also about that audience?
- Why did Foster use letters to tell the story? What kind of voices did this give her to work with?
- Is this a masquerade—a novel masquerading as history? Or is it a novel masquerading as a novel masquerading as history? How does The Coquette contrast with the typical masquerade? Was Eliza a typical heroine? Did Foster show virtuous women being rewarded?
- How does this “novel” present and critique the choices and options that women had in their lives?
- What was the cause of Eliza’s “downfall”?
- Why did Foster denounce novels as “dangerous” (1798, quoted in Kerber, p. 239)? As Cathy Davidson asks, “How does one grant a voice to a woman who, given the society in which the novel is written and read, enjoys neither voice nor privilege?” (xix).
