In a teasing letter to Eliza, Lucy says that her busy love life would make good fodder for a novel, writing that
Your truly romantic letter came safe to hand. Indeed, my dear, it would make a very pretty figure in a novel. A bleeding heart, slighted love, and all the et ceteras of romance, enter into the composition!
Because the reader understands, as Lucy does not, that Eliza's story actually is the substance of a novel, this passage serves as an instance of dramatic irony. Even though Lucy means this comment as an off-hand joke, the ironic moment provides some authorial commentary, highlighting how Foster adheres to and departs from the literary conventions of her era. As Lucy points out, Eliza's story of poor decisions, jilted lovers, and emotional highs and lows does recall the content of many 18th-century novels, especially epistolary sagas like Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, which Mrs. Richman later references. Targeted at women readers, many romance novels would have told a love story while reinforcing conventional social mores like chastity and humility; at least on the surface, The Coquette does the same.
However, Foster actually uses the building blocks of her era's conservative literature to write a novel that criticizes patriarchal norms and women's second-class status in their society. By rendering Eliza a simultaneously sympathetic and flawed character, and showing how the villainous behavior of Sanford leads to her downfall, Foster complicates conventional narratives that sought to enforce repressive social norms about women's behavior. In this passage, Foster both contextualizes her work within the broader literary ecosystem and differentiates herself from other contemporary writers.
