Literature > The Coquette: The Death of Innocence

There is barely anything more tragic than the death of the two well-known Shakespeare characters, Romeo and Juliet. Their story is widely known and accepted as the ultimate failure of a rigid and insensitive society. Hannah Foster’s heroin, Eliza Wharton is the Julia of her own times. The tragic ending of both stories implies an easily identifiable parallel between the lives of the two women, Eliza and Juliet. We first encounter this synonym in the letter that Lucy Sumner’s wrote to her girlfriend. She gives a description of a play she saw the night before and left her deeply disturbed. “Last evening I attended a tragedy, but never will I attend another. I have not yet been able to erase the gloom which it impressed upon my mind. It was Romeo and Juliet” (223). We can view this account as an indication of the tragedy that is about to take place.

Interestingly enough, the first time we come across with the notion of death and tragedy, is right after Eliza is rejected by her former fiancé, Mr. Boyle. This is the starting point of her deterioration that will result in her, and her child’s decease. Eliza asks her former lover to forgive her behavior, and if it’s possible, to continue their friendship. Mr. Boyle informs her about his engagement to a “worthy” girl, and at the same time he wishes her a life time of happiness. This refusal upsets Eliza enormously, since her last hope of contentment was gone. She knew she couldn’t trust in the return of Sanford, and even if he was to come back, it would only cause her to suffer even more.

The next reference to tragedy in the story is when Eliza informs her friend about the death of Mrs. Richman’s “babe – her little Harriet, of whom she was dotingly fond” (241). This picture is even more distressing since here a little, innocent creature dies – as innocent as Eliza’s child. In this same letter we also get an accurate portrayal of Eliza’s depressed state of mind.

“Happy the babe who, privileged by fate
To shorter labors and a lighter weight,
Received but yesterday the gift of breath,
Ordered tomorrow to return to death” (242).

This is one of the last few letters she wrote as she came closer and closer to her end. In the beginning she was a happy and careless young woman who just wanted to experience life in the high society, and she was also a writer of long and frequent letters to her friends and family. Towards the end, she stopped writing letters, and just by the pleading of others was she able to put down a few short lines. She became very secretive, didn’t even trust her closest friends. While earlier she got them involved in every affair, later she barely even spoke to them, including her mother.

In her last letter to Mrs. Wharton, she again spoke of death. “What shall I say on a subject which deprives me of the power of expression? Would to God I had been totally deprived of that power before so fatal a subject required its exertion” (258). The “fatal” word appears again in her other goodbye letter addressed to Julia Granby. Eliza also asks her to “bury my crimes in the grave with me and to preserve the remembrance of my former virtues which engaged your love and confidence” (261).

There is an abundance of indication that something terrible is going to happen. I think the death of Eliza comes as a no surprise, however the reader might hope it is not going to take place. The novel is clearly divided into two halves, the first of which deals with the coquetry of Eliza, and the second half, which reports her fall from the top and the death of her innocence. The turning point is the scene in which Mr. Boyle finds Eliza and Sanford conversing in the garden, and he misinterprets what he thinks is another game of hers. Mr. Boyle waves her a final good bye, marking the beginning of Eliza’s end. Until that point she couldn’t imagine that a man could not love her, and it affects her profoundly. She stops going to parties after that, and avoids the company of others, both of which she valued so highly before the incident. We can see her slow, but gradual death caused by shame and disappointment. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that one of the reasons of her descent was the unreciprocated love she felt toward Mr. Boyle. She never loved him the way she loved Sanford. Clearly, her affections were directed towards the wrong man. Her affair with Sanford is the reason why she had to leave the house of her mother, and sneak out in the middle of the night. Nobody knew where she went, except for Sanford, who promised to provide her with anything she might need. This is a clear indication that no matter how despicable a man he was, he loved Eliza, while at the same time he ruined her life.

A final reference to the Romeo and Juliet story can be seen in one of the last letters that Julia wrote to their mutual friend, Mrs. Sumner. She reports: “The drama is now closed! A tragical one it has proved” (264). Without saying exactly what happened, the reader immediately knows that Eliza had finally met her end, just like Shakespeare’s two young lovers. In the Coquette, only one of the lovers die, Eliza. But Sanford suffers an even worse faith. He looses his wife, his fortune, and his Eliza; the worst that could happen to him.

Everyone cries for Eliza, and no one cares about Sanford. We all sympathize with the woman who was seduced by an unworthy man, and we put all the responsibility on his shoulders. Back in those days, it seems that, women were the powerless objects of seduction, and if they weren’t strong enough, became a nameless trophy in a book of some hollow man.

 

 

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