The novel is a fictionalized account of a Connecticut socialite named Eliza Wharton, whose death nine years prior had been highly publicized. Wharton was a 37 year-old woman who died at a roadside tavern giving birth to a stillborn, and being unmarried, her death was turned into a moral allegory by ministers and journalists. Women were lectured on the moral consequences of reading romantic novels, and Eliza Wharton was labeled as a coquette. Foster wrote the novel in epistolary form, which allowed for an unbiased perspective of the characters and their actions. Drawing on factual information from the newspaper accounts, Foster gave a much more sympathetic portrayal of Wharton and the repressive social conditions that faced women of the time

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