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This paper examines the sexual politics of a seduction plot in Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette. Foster places the responsibility for Eliza’s fall not only on her seducer Sanford but also on Eliza herself. Eliza’s youth, gaiety, and volatility that label her as a coquette inflame her passion for freedom that exemplifies the emancipatory spirit of the American Revolution. The pursuit of liberty and independence as democratic ideals, however, posed a dilemma in the early republic, because America, as a new nation, politically had to challenge British parental control, while individual American fathers domestically had to uphold their parental authority over their children. Eliza’s seduction plot reflects such a dilemma inherent in the American republican ideology by domesticating American revolutionary polemics. In particular, anti-patriarchalism is more troubling to women because their exercise of free will cannot secure their virtue. Eliza’s coquettish airs are always already subjected to her virtuous female circle’s scrutiny. I contend that Eliza’s plight thus becomes a testing ground for the possibility of early republican women’s autonomy without breaching gender decorum. Consequently, Foster’s The Coquette serves as a guard to keep the solid patriarchal restriction of women in the domestic realm.
