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Mrs. Richman
Eliza Wharton’s mother. Mrs. Wharton is the epitome of a proper eighteenth-century woman; she is a devoted mother to her children, whom she constantly dotes on, and she is fiercely proud of her place in the domestic sphere. Mrs. Wharton has recently been widowed, but she was likewise devoted to her husband, who Foster hints was also a preacher. After Eliza becomes pregnant with Sanford’s illegitimate baby, she is too ashamed to tell her mother. Eliza hides her condition and confesses in a letter, but not before she throws herself at Mrs. Wharton’s feet and begs forgiveness for being a “wretch.” She easily grants Eliza forgiveness and professes her eternal love. Mrs. Wharton is devastated when Eliza runs off and leaves town in the middle of the night, and she is the first to read in a Boston newspaper that a woman matching Eliza’s description has died after giving birth at an inn at Danvers.
Mrs. M. Wharton Quotes in The Coquette
The The Coquette quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. M. Wharton or refer to Mrs. M. Wharton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Letter 69
Quotes
Should it please God to spare and restore me to health, I shall return, and endeavor, by a life of penitence and rectitude, to expiate my past offences. But should I be called from this scene of action; and leave behind me a helpless babe, the innocent sufferer of its mother’s shame, Oh, Julia, let your friendship for me extend to the little stranger! Intercede with my mother to take it under her protection; and transfer to it all her affection for me; to train it up in the ways of piety and virtue, that it may compensate her for the afflictions which I have occasioned!
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Letter 71
Quotes
I foresee, my dear Mrs. Sumner, that this disastrous affair will suspend your enjoyments, as it has mine. But what are our feelings, compared with the pangs which rend a parent’s heart? This parent, I here behold, inhumanly stripped of the best solace of her declining years, by the ensnaring machinations of a profligate debauchee! Not only the life, but what was still dearer, the reputation and virtue of the unfortunate Eliza, have fallen victims at the shrine of libertinism! Detested be the epithet! Let it henceforth bear its true signature, and candor itself shall call it lust and brutality!
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Letter 73
Quotes
How sincerely I sympathize with the bereaved parent of the dear, deceased Eliza, I can feel, but have not power to express. Let it be her consolation, that her child is at rest. The resolution which carried this deluded wanderer thus far from her friends, and supported her through her various trials, is astonishing! Happy would it have been, had she exerted an equal degree of fortitude in repelling the first attacks upon her virtue! But she is no more; and heaven forbid that I should accuse or reproach her!
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Mrs. M. Wharton Quotes in The Coquette
The The Coquette quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. M. Wharton or refer to Mrs. M. Wharton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Letter 69
Quotes
Should it please God to spare and restore me to health, I shall return, and endeavor, by a life of penitence and rectitude, to expiate my past offences. But should I be called from this scene of action; and leave behind me a helpless babe, the innocent sufferer of its mother’s shame, Oh, Julia, let your friendship for me extend to the little stranger! Intercede with my mother to take it under her protection; and transfer to it all her affection for me; to train it up in the ways of piety and virtue, that it may compensate her for the afflictions which I have occasioned!
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Letter 71
Quotes
I foresee, my dear Mrs. Sumner, that this disastrous affair will suspend your enjoyments, as it has mine. But what are our feelings, compared with the pangs which rend a parent’s heart? This parent, I here behold, inhumanly stripped of the best solace of her declining years, by the ensnaring machinations of a profligate debauchee! Not only the life, but what was still dearer, the reputation and virtue of the unfortunate Eliza, have fallen victims at the shrine of libertinism! Detested be the epithet! Let it henceforth bear its true signature, and candor itself shall call it lust and brutality!
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Letter 73
Quotes
How sincerely I sympathize with the bereaved parent of the dear, deceased Eliza, I can feel, but have not power to express. Let it be her consolation, that her child is at rest. The resolution which carried this deluded wanderer thus far from her friends, and supported her through her various trials, is astonishing! Happy would it have been, had she exerted an equal degree of fortitude in repelling the first attacks upon her virtue! But she is no more; and heaven forbid that I should accuse or reproach her!
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