She is best known for her epistolary novel The Coquette; or The History of Eliza Wharton published in 1787. It was not until the 1860s, years after she died, that she was revealed as the author of the story. The novel 's main character, Eliza Wharton, was based off a real person in the 1700s named Elizabeth Whitman. Both people, real and fake, broke against womens ' social norm giving women who read the novel hope that times were not always going to be like they are. In The Coquette, Eliza Wharton was a young, flirtatious girl who found herself in a love triangle which eventually leads to her becoming pregnant, having a stillborn baby, and dying not long afterward. Getting pregnant out of wedlock was looked at so poorly that Eliza had to move out her town out of fear of being banished. Society literally pushed her out of her comfort zone and her home because she did something that society told her “she shouldn 't have done”. However, many critics congratulate Eliza for her action, “..... [a] more recent readings have tended to argue that the novel celebrates Eliza 's resistance to gendered social constraints” (VanDette). This highlights that Eliza, and Elizabeth, want to change the roles for women and, because they were just the first to do it, it made them look bad. By Foster acknowledging Eliza 's choices as “not all that bad” she was able to show women that they should not be ashamed of their actions even if society tells them that they need to
She is best known for her epistolary novel The Coquette; or The History of Eliza Wharton published in 1787. It was not until the 1860s, years after she died, that she was revealed as the author of the story. The novel 's main character, Eliza Wharton, was based off a real person in the 1700s named Elizabeth Whitman. Both people, real and fake, broke against womens ' social norm giving women who read the novel hope that times were not always going to be like they are. In The Coquette, Eliza Wharton was a young, flirtatious girl who found herself in a love triangle which eventually leads to her becoming pregnant, having a stillborn baby, and dying not long afterward. Getting pregnant out of wedlock was looked at so poorly that Eliza had to move out her town out of fear of being banished. Society literally pushed her out of her comfort zone and her home because she did something that society told her “she shouldn 't have done”. However, many critics congratulate Eliza for her action, “..... [a] more recent readings have tended to argue that the novel celebrates Eliza 's resistance to gendered social constraints” (VanDette). This highlights that Eliza, and Elizabeth, want to change the roles for women and, because they were just the first to do it, it made them look bad. By Foster acknowledging Eliza 's choices as “not all that bad” she was able to show women that they should not be ashamed of their actions even if society tells them that they need to