In an early encounter between Mrs. Richman and Eliza, Foster uses foreshadowing to hint at Eliza's fate. One night after dinner, Mrs. Richman visits Eliza's room to encourage her to settle down quickly with Mr. Boyer. Eliza dismisses this advice, because she has just escaped from an unwanted engagement and wants some time to enjoy her social life before thinking about the future. As Eliza recounts the incident in a letter to Lucy, when Mrs. Richman gets up to leave,
Something seemingly prophetic in her looks and expressions, cast a momentary gloom upon my mind!
In other words, Eliza experiences a brief moment of foreboding as a result of Mrs. Richman's intense expression. Eliza quickly dismisses her own feelings, writing to Lucy that "I have no notion of becoming a recluse" and that she considers Mrs. Richman to be "rather prudish."
However, Mrs. Richman's advice proves to be extremely wise. By refusing to entertain Boyer's proposals seriously and showing much more affection towards Sanford, Eliza ultimately loses the pastor's interest and the respectable lifestyle that he could have provided her. After Boyer marries another woman, Eliza experiences a mental crisis and obsesses over her earlier behavior, chastising herself for not following the advice that Mrs. Richman and others gave her. The novel ultimately complicates Eliza's highly critical depiction of herself, arguing that Sanford's duplicity and oppressive social norms for female behavior are to blame for her downfall. However, this ominous moment at the very beginning of the novel suggests to the reader what will eventually happen and hints that Eliza will come to blame herself for not accepting Boyer's early advances.
Discouraging Eliza from flirting with Sanford, Mrs. Richman makes an allusion to Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa. In a private conversation, she says,
I do not think you seducible; nor was Richardson’s Clarissa, till she made herself the victim, by her own indiscretion.
First published in 1747, Clarissa is a wildly successful novel about a young woman named Clarissa who, despite her virtuous character, gets involved with an untrustworthy libertine who fails to fulfill his promise to marry her. Like The Coquette, Clarissa is an epistolary novel; in fact, Richardson had helped to popularize the epistolary form with his 1740 novel Pamela. All three novels explore similar themes around flirtation, sexual transgression, and male perfidy.
Both Pamela and Clarissa would have been very popular with Anglophone audiences by the time the action of The Coquette takes place in the late 18th century. So it makes sense that Mrs. Richman references Richardson's work when trying to warn Eliza against proceeding with Sanford. However, like Clarissa, Eliza is eventually seduced despite her virtuous character and good intentions; in that sense, this comment from Mrs. Richman serves as a moment of foreshadowing as well.
Clarissa is known for endorsing conservative norms about women's roles while also painting a nuanced portrait of female sexuality and the limited choices female characters have within a patriarchal society. By aligning her novel with Richardson's, Foster is hinting at her own subversive goals to the reader.
