Abstract
This thesis examines themes of responsibility, agency, identity, and grief in the context of three early-American seduction novels – Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette, William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy, and Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple. The first chapter utilizes Linda Kerber’s “republican mother” idea to examine mothers' responsibility and grief in fallen woman narratives. It also investigates social institutions such as marriage and courtship which govern the constraints of the “fallen woman.” The second chapter introduces Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina, a British seduction novel, for comparison, and focuses on the daughter and her agency, identity, and desire. This chapter highlights scholarship such as Erving Goffman’s identity theory and Jonathan Kramnick’s “Locke, Haywood, and Consent.” The final chapter, focused on grief, utilizes poetry and sermons as away of comparing the effects of sentimental narrative with alternative literary forms. Judith Butler’s “grievability” and Thomas W. Laqueur’s “Humanitarian Narrative” are key themes in an investigation of the ways in which people decide who is worthy of mourning and find emotional resonance in sentimental literature.