The Culture of Sisterhood in Fosters The Coquette - Research Paper Example

December 4, The Culture of Sisterhood in Foster’s The Coquette Recent scholarship writings are expanding their analysis of eighteenth-century novels by including the intricate economic and social forces that shape the ideologies of gender, class, and race (Pettengill 185). During this time, the middle-class was growing and many middle-class women were accessing education, and yet, they were still geared for Republican motherhood. Sisterhood, which was based on intimate bonds with female siblings and friends, helped women deal with these varied and conflicting social, family, and individual desires and changes in their lives. Epistolary novels became prominent in this era because they allowed educated middle-class women to use letters and other documents as a form of expressing their ideals, desires, experiences, and frustrations in life. Epistolary novels are self-reflexive texts that function as catharsis to women, which, depending on analysis, either promotes or opposes (or both) their socio-economic and cultural beliefs and behaviors. An example of an epistolary novel is the famous writing of Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette. The Coquette is based on the well-known real-life story of Elizabeth Whitman. Whitman was an educated woman who came from a good family. She had an illegitimate baby and soon died from fever in a place far from her family and friends (Pettengill 185). The Coquette mirrors Whitman’s life and death, as it narrates the experiences of Eliza Wharton, who, after the death of her minister fiancee, had to choose between Reverend J. Boyer and Major Peter Sanford. Eliza is called a coquette in the novel because of her free-spirited approach to her romantic relationships and absence of commitment to any specific man. As an epistolary novel, readers understand who Eliza is and what society she comes from through her letters to her friends. These writings, in addition, underscore the importance of friendship to women who have curtailed individual desires in a society of strict Republican patriarchal codes. Two scholarly writings are chosen to explore a critical conversation on sisterhood in Foster’s The Coquette, Claire C. Pettengill’s “Sisterhood in a Separate Sphere: Female Friendship in Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette and The Boarding School” and Ivy Schweitzer’s “Foster's Coquette: Resurrecting Friendship from the Tomb of Marriage.” Pettengill argues that female friendship in The Coquette is culturally significant in demonstrating eighteenth-century’s socio-economic conditions that produce patriarchal gender norms and expectations, but the female circle, however, has conflicting enabling and delimiting effects on Eliza, while Schweitzer believes that despite the limitations of the sisterhood, Eliza uses friendship as the main source of her moral and democratic values and actions. Pettengill and Schweitzer both assert that through an epistolary novel, Foster demonstrates that sisterhood is more significant in times of gender oppressive societies present in the eighteenth century because it offers a cultural matrix that guides women toward expected changes in their lives. Pettengill notes that the novel is structured as an epistolary to depict intimate conversations of women about themselves and one another. She argues that The Coquette is a “dialogue among women,” “a self-conscious debate” about their gender roles and responsibilities and their female friendships. In order to cope with strenuous social changes and socially-produced gender codes, these women rely on their friendship to find their voices and to connect with those who have the same voices. Schweitzer agrees with Pettengill’s social analysis of the function of sisterhood for women. Schweitzer explores the “separate spheres” of marriage and female circles that enable women of the rising middle class to find respite in the “rituals of homosocial friendship” because they are more egalitarian than their marriage and other aspects of their public lives (4). Eliza is also part of the middle class who is fraught with tensions within herself and society because she wants to enjoy her freedom as a single woman, and yet, she also feels the pressure of “womanhood” from her own friends who give advice on her coquetry and push her to marry a respectable man. The cultural matrix of sisterhood concerns the preparation of women, after all, from one stage to another, as if the linearity of their existence is the only absolutely right form of existence for all women. Pettengill focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of the culture of the female circle to more libertarian women like Eliza. Eliza is seen as libertarian in her values and actions because of her non-conformist desires for freedom. Pettengill gives the example of Eliza’s first letter to Lucy, where she admits that she is happy that she is no longer part of a passion-less engagement after her fiance dies, to which Lucy replied with lessons for her friend. Eliza responds with irony when she writes back to Lucy: “I have received your letter; your moral lecture rather; and be assured, my dear, your monitorial lessons and advice shall be attended to” (Foster 7). For Pettengill, the irony represents the ideological differences between Eliza, the liberal woman, and Lucy, the soon-to-be traditional Republican mother (193). Despite their idiosyncrasies, Eliza finds comfort in her correspondences with her female friends. In fact, Eliza wants honesty, not deception, when asking for her friends’ opinions and perceptions: “Pray write me impartially; let me know your real sentiment, for I rely on your opinion” (Foster 53). Eliza is not afraid to hear truthful criticisms, to which Lucy has previous replied: “It is the task of friendship sometimes to tell disagreeable truths” (Foster 27). Pettengill sees the candor and sincerity in these letters as a sign that, for Eliza, the culture of sisterhood “works” for her, if only she did not succumb to Sanford’s charms (194). Though aware of the strengths of the female circle in supporting decisions and enabling self-expression for women, Pettengill criticizes the imbalance in the uses and outcomes of sisterhood for Eliza. Eliza is single, while Mrs. Richman is married and Lucy is about to get married, so sisterhood becomes secondary to marriage. Pettengill underlines that while Eliza writes freely and in detailed manner to her friends, they do not reply in the same nature because friendship is “a corollary to the main thesis [of] republican motherhood” (195). As a result, Eliza cannot expect to get understanding for her unique singlehood concerns, but remonstration from the perspectives of Republican thought. Moreover, Pettengill argues that sisterhood has its delimiting effects on Eliza too. Pettengill quotes Julia’s evaluation of Eliza’s last bits of writing, which allowed them to see that Eliza regrets her immoral actions (198). From here, Pettengill asserts that what Julia calls as scraps of paper only indicate their “disinterest” on Eliza as a human being and more focused on her function as a sister, where Julia and her friends are given the chance “to judge and forgive her” (199). Pettengill’s analysis demonstrates that female friendship is fraught with contradictions that impact friends with different personalities. Sisterhood is a divided private sphere, which, when publicized through the epistolary novel, renders it as a domain with diverse functions and outcomes, both good and bad. Schweitzer, however, wants to emphasize the importance of the separate sphere of sisterhood in promoting a political response against Republican patriarchal ideologies. Schweitzer provides sufficient background on the absence of equality in marriages during Foster’s time and the need for women to find a sphere of their own through sisterhood (4). She asserts that epistolary novels like The Coquette provide “political coverture” for the Federal marital structure of womanhood (5). Schweitzer is saying that the female circle provides a democratic answer to the undemocratic life of women. On the one hand, Schweitzer considers the line of criticisms against sisterhood because these friends metaphorically murdered Eliza’s desires through controlling and admonishing her (6). On the other hand, Schweitzer believes that Eliza represents “civic republicanism,” which she found in her idea and practice of sisterhood (7). While friendship in ancient times was based on brotherhood, Schweitzer shows that the female circle has created their sense of “feminized and feminizing sympathy” that characterizes their notion of friendship as a domestic and private social domain, where “mutuality” and “psychic and social ensemble of rituals,” as well as “above all equalizing affiliations” are dominant (9). She is saying that sisterhood offers a political model of equality that is not present in their marriages and other social relationships. Schweitzer quotes Eliza’s understanding of these patriarchal relations, arranged marriages and coercive paternal decisions for instance, as “slavery” and “entombment” (9). Schweitzer is saying that Eliza sees friendship as her ticket to equality and freedom that she cannot feel in marriage or under the roof of her parents. The paper interprets Schweitzer’s social analysis as a means for supporting the need for the culture of sisterhood because it is more empowering than disempowering for women. Schweitzer further explains that the female circle is not about liberty alone, but the balance of duties and benevolence. Schweitzer gives another democratic function of sisterhood in guiding Eliza’s “civic republicanism” (7). In her letters to her friends, Eliza seeks their frank responses to her ideas and stories, so that she can make the right decisions in her life. Schweitzer sees this as sisterhood’s purpose of balancing social relations with individual desires (11). In addition, Schweitzer believes that sisterhood helps Eliza become more sociable, despite her non-conformist nature. Schweitzer explains that, in accessing the advices of her friends, Eliza is able to see herself more clearly with respect to herself and others around her (12). Schweitzer is saying that, through the female circle, Eliza creates social bonds that affirm her civic duties. The paper notes that what Schweitzer does is to connect sisterhood to the political overtures of Foster’s time. The paper believes that Eliza’s egalitarian views of friendship is doomed because of her inability to fit Federalist notions of femininity, where her idea of friendship does not also fit what her friends think what their friendship is for, which is to support traditional patriarchal structures. Pettengill is right when she said that Eliza has friends who also delimited her, while building her up through affection and sympathy, because they have a different idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood’s peak, for Lucy and others, is not the autonomy of the female person in the private and public spheres, but the subjugation of sisterhood into more important Republican relationships of marriage and parenting. Eliza clearly is a coquette who rejects such feminine molds. Schweitzer expands the role of sisterhood in the political imagination of the eighteenth-century, but she seems to neglect how difficult it must have been for Eliza to have friends who love her, yet they also patronize her. The paper believes that their morals and norms are not applicable at all to Eliza who has a different idea of womanhood. Her autonomous identity does not and will never fit the corners of Republic motherhood, so friendship for her is only a delayed transition toward lifelong melancholy and death. Pettengill and Schweitzer argue that sisterhood is crucial to eighteenth-century middle-class women because it offers a separate sphere where equality and genuine sympathy are possible to attain. However, Pettengill explores the contradicting functions of female friends for Eliza, while Schweitzer argues that sisterhood still plays an important role in helping Eliza reach moral and democratic values and actions. The paper believes that Pettengill and Schweitzer make a good point on showing that sisterhood can be a supportive cultural matrix, but it paints a more pessimistic analysis. If the cultural matrix is against Eliza’s political and individual desires, it only serves to delay her fall to melancholy and death. She cannot exist long in a society that is a coquette to liberal femininity. Her only liberal choice is to die without the sisterhood that failed her. The tragedy of the epistolary novel is clear- women in these times could only try to have a voice, but, in the end, their voices are nothing to the society that controls them. Works Cited Foster, Hannah Webster. The Coquette. 1797. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. . Pettengill, Claire C. “Sisterhood in a Separate Sphere: Female Friendship in Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette and The Boarding School.” Early American Literature 27.3 (1992): 185-203. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. Schweitzer, Ivy. “Foster's Coquette: Resurrecting Friendship from the Tomb of Marriage.” Arizona Quarterly 61.2 (2005): 1-32. Humanities Source. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. Read More