The Coquette

Julia has been gone for longer than she intended, but she is at last returning to Eliza. Julia is impressed with Lucy’s conduct as a moral, married woman, and endeavors to be more like her. 

Julia plans to visit in a month, and suggests they visit Mrs. Richman when she does.

Julia returns to Hartford to find a grim change of mood has taken place. Mrs. Wharton is grave; Eliza bursts into tears of joy upon seeing Julia. 

Eliza laments the sad change in her appearance and bearing, that she is no longer the “sprightly girl, who was always welcome at the haunts of hilarity and mirth” (138). 

Julia and Eliza have dinner with Mrs. Wharton, Eliza’s brother, and Eliza’s sister-in-law. Eliza livens up, but she is still not rid of her perpetual gloom. 

Mrs. Wharton tells Julia that Eliza has been associating, once in a while, with Major Sanford, but not with anyone else. Sanford’s character is “worse than ever”: he is “much abroad, and frequently entertained large parties of worthless bacchanalians,” and neglects his wife worse than ever (139).

After a “long and tedious siege,” Major Sanford has achieved his goal: he has consummated his relationship with Eliza (140). Sanford has never been unsuccessful with women, and is tenacious in seeking the “rich reward of [his] dissimulation and gallantry” (140). 

Nancy Sanford gives birth to a stillborn boy; Sanford does not really care. He is more concerned about Eliza’s “rapidly declining” health (140). 

Julia is expected soon at Mrs. Wharton’s house, and Sanford knows that she will see through his and Eliza’s affair and end it. Sanford notes that he would never attempt to seduce Julia; her honor and virtue are too strong.

Eliza is ruined; her virtue is lost. 

Eliza refuses to visit Lucy’s mother as agreed. Eliza sleeps in the same room as Julia, until, one night, she decides to take another apartment in the house out of restlessness.

In the middle of the night, Julia hears the front door quietly opening and observes a man leaving. She hears Eliza returning to her room shortly after. She has no doubt that the man is Sanford. 

Early next morning, Julia confronts her. Eliza breaks down; the man was indeed Sanford, and they have been having a secret affair. Julia chastises her; she has given her “virtue to an abandoned, despicable profligate” (142). Eliza begs her to have pity. Julia says that this knowledge will greatly hurt Eliza’s mother. 

Julia tells Eliza that it will be difficult for her friends to forgive her, but Eliza only cares about her mother’s reaction. Eliza asks Julia to tell her mother for her; her health cannot bear it. Julia consents for “as long as prudence requires” (144). 

At breakfast, Mrs. Wharton laments her daughter’s decline and asks Julia to try and discover the cause. Though she already knows, Julia agrees to try. 

Eliza and Julia go for a ride. Observing her friend, Julia is once again surprised and disappointed that Eliza fell for Sanford. Eliza says that it is because of “that unrestrained levity of disposition, that fondness for dissipation and coquetry” that pushed her from Mr. Boyer (145). The loss of Boyer “fatally depressed and enfeebled” her (145). Sanford’s friendly advances during this period were more than she could resist in her vulnerable state.

Eliza and Sanford’s physical relationship did not last long. Eliza soon “awoke to a most poignant sense of his baseness” and of her “own crime and misery” (145). Eliza needed help, and finding nobody but Sanford there for her, found it impossible to leave him. 

Eliza is now pregnant, and her health is failing. She has no hope for the future of her child. She expects to die and believes it the most merciful thing that the child dies with her. 

Eliza plans to speak with Sanford one last time. She will then write a letter to her mother explaining everything, including her future intentions. She reassures Julia that she is not planning on committing suicide. 

Julia tells Mrs. Wharton that Eliza will tell her the reason for her suffering in two days.

Eliza goes to meet Sanford in the garden one last time. She withdraws, weeping, to her room in order to write the promised letter to Mrs. Wharton. Mrs. Wharton’s kindness wrenches her conscience, but no amount of prying gets Eliza to reveal her secret just yet. 

Eliza, without explaining herself, begs for her mother’s forgiveness. Mrs. Wharton tells her “however great your transgression, be assured of my forgiveness, my compassion, and my continued love” (149). This is too much for Eliza. She rushes out of the room. 

Eliza gives Julia two letters, which Julia promises not to open until the next day. One is to explain the situation to Mrs. Wharton; the other is to “close the account” between Eliza and Julia (150). Julia assures Eliza that she forgives her. This relieves Eliza. 

In the middle of the night, Julia awakens to the sound of a carriage. She springs from bed in time to see someone she believes to be Eliza and Major Sanford riding rapidly away. Eliza has gone. 

Julia gives Mrs. Wharton Eliza’s letter. Eliza’s mother is beset with sorrow. She wonders where her daughter could be going; nowhere but her home will give her “those kind attentions, which her situation demands” (151). 

Major Sanford is gone, and Julia is determined to see him when he returns two days later. She writes to him, and he responds that Eliza is “‘well provided for, conveniently accommodated, and has every thing to make her happy, that love or affluence can give’” (152). Beyond that, he will not reveal her location, though he promises to tell Mrs. Wharton if she is in danger. 

Mrs. Wharton and Julia are somewhat relieved. They employ a friend to trace Sanford’s steps to try to find Eliza.

Eliza’s letter is an apology to her mother. She laments that her mother’s advice has been lost on her. She says that she is “polluted, and no more worthy of her parentage” (153). She flees home to avoid her mother’s inevitable grief. She has become “a reproach and disgrace” to her friends (154). 

Eliza’s tears and repentance cannot undo her actions or restore her virtue. Because she is pregnant, she cannot even hide the signs of her fall from grace from the public. 

Her only sustaining hope is derived from the fact that Mrs. Wharton has promised to forgive her no matter what. She begs her mother to pray for her “ruined child” (155).

In her final letter to Julia, Eliza has the foreboding sense that this will be the last time they interact. She believes herself “in a confirmed consumption, which commonly proves fatal to persons in [her] situation” (155). She has concealed the symptoms from her mother, but she has known for a while. Death will be a “speedy relief from a life of guilt and woe” (155). 

If providence spares her, Eliza plans to live “a life of penitence and rectitude” (156). If she does not survive, and if she leaves behind a child, she wishes Julia to leave the child under Mrs. Wharton’s protection. She knows her mother will take good care of it.  

Eliza begs Julia to ask Mrs. Richman and Lucy Sumner to forgive her. She asks Julia to preserve the memory of her virtues and let her crimes die with her.