Foreword The following story is a jumble of the 1790s and the 2000s, which, in mixing together gender values, social norms, situations, settings and narrative conventions, ceases to quite make sense in either context. The idea is to view morally didactic literature two centuries old with a new eye. What is the same? What sounds stupid now? Where has feminism taken us in literature and in society? How does it feel to a modern reader to be advised so directly by an author? Maybe we fear extremes and scoff at tragedy. Did 1790s readers feel the same way about the fate of Charlotte Temple or Eliza Wharton? Lily is primarily an adaptation of Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson, with bits thrown in here and there of The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster. In the right column, you will see links to essays I have written to explain the conventions and ideas within the text. I have also marked places where I am closely mimicking a particular text. The chapter headings are taken directly from Charlotte Temple.	In the column I will comment on the text and link to short critical essays.
I do not mean to present Lily's story as stand-alone fiction. I mean only to translate the seduction story into modern terms, at times parodic. Unsure of my competency, Susanna Rowson and Hannah Webster Foster have at times deleted whole chapters of my story and inserted more appropriate writing. I bow to their superior knowledge of the genre and I giggle, presenting to you:   LILY OR VIRTUE CONFUSED	Samuel Richardson named his 1729 genre-founding seduction story Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. The Marquis de Sade published his novel, Justine, or Virtue Punished in 1791. I add my work, Lily, or Virtue Confused to a proud literary tradition. The epigraph to Chapter XXVII of Charlotte Temple reads: "Pensive she mourn'd, and hung her languid head,/ Like a fair lily overcharg'd with dew." The lily is the flower of death.
Author's Preface Lily Jones is buried in a cemetary next to an elementary school playground in Illinois. Her story is true, and ends badly. I tell you this to quench your curious thirst, to ruin the story for you. Then why read it? you ask. Why go through the motions of a formula tragedy? I ask you to read it because you are not Lily, and if I can help it, your story will not end like hers.	Susanna Rowson prefaced Charlotte Temple with the situation in which the "real" story of Charlotte was related to her, an assurance that her intention in fictionalizing was to save young ladies from Charlotte's fate. The preface includes plenty of dark and scary vocabulary to make sure her young readership knew that that fate was to be seriously bad.
A Boarding School Lily Jones didn't cry as she watched her parents' silver Audi blend with the south-going traffic on Park Street out her new dorm window. She had imagined tears, but instead, she felt an electric sort of thrill in her hands and feet, a swinging, limber feeling that she had been freed. She was a freshman at a small liberal arts college in Iowa. Her unpacked bags were full of blue jeans and pastel v-neck sweaters. She wore no eye makeup, only powder, and she had promised her parents that she would go to church on Sundays, even, as they stipulated, if she was hung over. "Mom, Dad. I don't drink!" she had said, shocked. Her parents had hugged her and said that Of course they knew that, but just in case she ever did, "Still, go to church."	Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette opens with Eliza's joy at the freedom she feels when she leaves her parents' house. In a seduction story, a lack of filial piety is the initial vice which will lead to a girl's ruin. Lily's family goes to church because they are good, social norm-respecting, God-fearing Christians. Many seduction stories start in church. It's important to establish that the coquette or seduced girl is transgressing all that is moral, and what better way than to point out the incongruity of seduction and Christianity?
Lily had never rebelled. It had seemed like a waste of time to try to piss off such faultless people. Her Dad was a minister, and though she got a lot of 7th Heaven jokes at school, she appreciated the ease with which he showed her what was right and wrong. Her Mom was a painter and taught art at a community college. She baked exceptionally good mocha cakes and liked to surprise Lily with trips to Chicago, spa weekends, and mother-daughter play-hookie days where they would lie on the futon in the living room eating brie cheese and watching secretly taped reruns of Sex and the City, which Lily's Dad thought was trashy. Lily believed in God and flossed regularly. She chose her first classes based on longterm academic goals, and her dreadlocked activist roommate thought she was a sweetie--a goody-goody, but not annoying about it.	The Sex and the City reference here is an allusion to the scandalousness of women's reading materials. Women's reading was a hot topic of the 1790s. Many felt that social problems such as the sensationalized seduction trend were attributable to the careless distribution of unsuitable books to women. For an interesting fictional conversation on the topic, see William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy.
An Intriguing Teacher Lily first met Luke Savage through Angelique, a Frenchwoman who cursed often and closed her eyes when tasting a wine. Angelique edited papers with her feet up on her desk. She was twenty-three, slight, wrapped in one of those knit sweater-coats that had exploded out of Paris into every American retail chain over the past year. Lily watched her with fascination. Angelique was bisexual, they said. She wore dark red lipstick and she didn't shave her armpits. She looked up from Lily's paper. "You need to look over your adjective agreements," she said, "but the paper is good. You understand Larmartine's poetry well. I think you must be lonely to write about such sad poetry like this." Angelique was the French department assistant, here on a salary to edit papers and run language labs. She liked Lily's blond Americanness, her shockability and her trust. She was like a perfect-daughter character from a sitcom, Angelique thought, lovely, sweet, repressed. Angelique thought it would be fun to loosen her up a little. Lily blushed. "No, I just think it's beautiful. O Lac, and all that. The lover floating on the lake, as time rushes all around him." Angelique invited her over for stirfry. When Angelique became a good friend of Lily's, though, Lily still did not mention her in her Sunday night phone calls home. She wasn't quite sure why she felt odd about her friend. Older, yes, and French--her parents sure didn't like the French--but there was something dangerous and exciting about the way Angelique moved, the way she gestured with a cigarette as she told stories of ex-boyfriends and reckless nights in Paris.	Rampant stereotyping of the French! In the 1790s, it is safe to say that all readers were aware of the French revolution. Most, or, as some argue, all, literature of the period can be aligned with some political view. Conservative writers, or those who opposed French revolutionary values, tended to depict the French as a depraved people poised to corrupt other nations as they had corrupted their own. Angelique might be to Lily as France was to Ireland, for instance. See my essay on Nationality and Revolution.
Luke Savage arrived late to a party at Angelique's apartment and hung his jacket by the door. There were twenty or so people nursing glasses of Shiraz, laughing on couches and clustered around the stereo. Savage was a five year alumnus of the college, back in town to do market research for his advertising company. He was of middle height, blond, and broodingly attractive, like a character from D.H. Lawrence. He noticed Lily before he recognized his friends in the crowd and he waved them off absently. She was standing by the window in a blue plaid skirt and a white sweater, nodding encouragingly as another undergrad talked. Savage felt that he had never seen such pure beauty before, and within the hour, he was standing by the window, unable to look away from her bright green eyes, as she nodded up at him.	The seducer enters! Read The Seducer. The seducer is always attracted to his prey by her innocence and beauty.
Natural Sense of Propriety Inherent in the Female Bosom "I just think he's being a little rude." Lily lay on Angelique's couch. It was October, afternoon, starkly sunny outside Angelique's windows. Angelique sat at the round table with a mug of coffee, half listening, half reading a puffy-covered grocery store novel. "Hm?" "He calls my room twice a day. Are you listening? Your friend Savage, he won't leave me alone. He, like, hovers." Angelique looked up, smirking, from her book. "Oh come on, Lily. I've seen you. It's ok to"--here she whispered--"like a boy" Lily laughed. "But he's twenty-eight. Don't you think that's sketchy? That's not a boy. There are laws against that." Angelique took her coffee mug to the sink and rinsed it. "Maybe you're right," she said, mock-thoughtful. "And after all, he's not so good-looking." "No, it's not--." Lily shifted uncomfortably. "I think he's cute." She was thinking of Savage a few days ago, smoking on a bench outside the Humanities building, of his strong jaw and the way his eyes absorbed her whole attention when she passed him, forcing her to rubberneck and regret it.	In Charlotte Temple, La Rue encourages Charlotte's illicit affection for her seducer, Montraville, in conversations upon which this one was modeled. Note also that Angelique is reading something trashy and popular! No wonder she is so depraved.
* * * "Oh my dear Girls," cries Ms. Rowson, "for to such only am I writing, listen not to the voice of love, unless sanctioned by parental approbation: be assured, it is now past the days of romance: no woman can be run away with contrary to her own inclination: then kneel down each morning, and request kind heaven to keep you free from temptation, or should it please to suffer you to be tried, pray for fortitude to resist the impulse of inclination when it runs counter to the precepts of religion and virtue" (23).	This quotation illustrates Susanna Rowson's use of direct address in Charlotte Temple. It was important for these seduction stories to be read as "tales of truth," stories on the fictional fence. Rowson clearly embellished and fabricated much of Charlotte's tale, but the legitimacy of her warning to young ladies lies in the immediate danger of seduction. Direct adress was a narrative tool commonly employed to this end in the 1790s.
We Know Not What a Day May Bring Forth "I'll have the veal, thanks." Paul Goodman handed the menu back to the waiter with a deference that annoyed Lily. Paul was on the football team. Lily had seen him in the dining hall, loading his tray with carbohydrates, slapping his teammates' shoulders. When her mother had told her that she'd set up a blind date with the new pastor's son, who just happened--"and isn't that a piece of luck"--to be at school with Lily, she had not put the name to the face. Now the face was only feet away, moonlike, expectant. "Oh." Lily threw him her sweetest smile. "I guess I'll have the Caesar salad." The waiter left them. Paul talked about biology and some Tom Cruise movie that Lily hadn't seen, and while he talked, his broad shoulders rocked with enthusiasm. Lily nodded and nodded. This was a nice boy. She liked him, really. It was stupid to even think of Savage, stupid for the name to even cross her mind. She let Paul kiss her once outside her dorm, and her mother was thrilled to hear that there would be a second date. Lily felt that she was being carried by an irresistable current toward whatever God might choose for her.	What is this? Is Lily playing the field? Has she not read my essay on the dangers of coquetry? "Coquette" is the 1790s word for the woman who suspends, puts off, or refuses her consent to a suitor. By entertaining the hopes of two suitors, Lily has sealed her fate.
When We Have Excited Curiosity, It Is But An Act of Good Nature to Gratify It This message is not flagged. [ Flag Message -Mark as Unread ] From: "Luke Savage" Add to Address Book To: "Lily" Subject: RE: stop it Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2003 07:41:43 -0400 Dear Lily, I hope that you know that I truly enjoy your company. I want nothing but to be your friend. Yours, Luke -----Original Message----- From: Lily [mailto: libertine666@verizon.net] Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 2:33 AM To: Luke Savage Subject: stop it Hi Luke. I did have a good time last night, but I think I need to ask you to stop inviting me out before things get confusing. You're going back to New York in December, so what do you really expect out of this? I like you a lot, but please let me go. Love, Lily P.S. I am dating Paul Goodman. Conflict of Love and Duty A few feeble emails were Lily's last line of defense against the considerable charms of Luke Savage. Awkward dates with Paul Goodman paled beside hours spent just grocery shopping, at the laundromat, or sitting on parking lot curbs with Savage, who made her feel calm and sure and very beautiful. October faded into November just as Paul faded into the arms of a taller, blonder girl. Still, Lily kept Savage's age a secret from her parents. When the phonecalls she had placed to Iowa during October break came up their phone bill, she explained that Yes, there was a boy she liked very much, and that his name was Luke. "Luke," she said, "majors in econ." Excepting tense, this was a true statement. "It's a shame about Paul," said Mrs. Jones over a staticky connection. "But I know you're a good judge of character, honey."	E-Pistolarity! The epistolary form (in which a story unfolds in correspondance between fictional characters) was a popular fictional form of the 1790s. Letter writing was one of the only ways in which literate women expressed themselves, so epistolarity lets us (in theory) hear women's private voices. It is also historically accurate, since letter-writing was very common. I refer you again to William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, as a good example of a seduction story written in epistolary form. See the bibliography entry for Blythe Forcey's article on epistolarity.
* * * When Savage asked her to fly to New York for winter break, Lily said no. She said no the second time and the third time. "But Angelique is coming," he pointed out. He kissed her lightly on the cheek and tucked her hair behind her ears with such tenderness that Lily sighed. Impulsively, half to see if she could do it, she grabbed his wrists and said "Ok." The next morning, Lily told Savage that she had changed her mind, but he could see the idea planted in her brain: New York in the snow, the giant tree in Rockefeller Plaza, the department stores all decorated for Christmas. Once she asked, "Do they put on the Nutcracker every year?" he knew she was his. Maternal Sorrow When it came time to drive to the airport, December 16th at the close of finals week, Lily was drunk. She hadn't planned to be drunk, but Angelique's celebratory Long Island Iced Teas were stronger than she had thought, and she had trouble understanding Savage's repeated statement that it was time to go. Lily had been waffling still, convinced that at the last minute she would see clearly the stupidity of the New York plan, so she hadn't called her (doting) parents. Turns out, at the last minute, she was drunk in a taxi, wrapped in Savage's overcoat.	This is important: Lily waffles and waffles, and she never actually agrees to go away with Savage! When Montraville shows up with the coach to take Charlotte Temple to America in Susanna Rowson's novel, Charlotte faints. This moment is a fascinating confusion of the role of a seduced woman's consent in her final culpability. I updated "swooned" to "drunk," but the issue is the same. Modern justice tells us that a woman must be conscious to consent, but this wasn't intuitive in the 1790s. Just ask Rousseau, or read my essay on Consent and Female Agency.
* * * Getting no answer at Lily's room phone number, the Joneses drove from Illinois to Iowa on Saturday morning to pick her up. The Jones family Christmas celebration usually took place out in Massachusetts at the grandparents' farm, too far for Lily and her parents to travel, but this year, as a special surprise for Lily, Mrs. Jones had arranged for all the cousins and aunts and uncles to have Christmas in Illinois. Mrs. Jones, bursting with anticipation to reveal the surprise, ran upstairs to Lily's dorm room. But Lily's half of the room was empty, cleared out. Frantic, Mrs. Jones shook Lily's dreadlocked activist roommate by the shoulders. "Where could she be?" After a long moment, the roommate recalled that Lily had gone to New York. "New York," she said. "Yeah." Mrs. Jones froze. "Did she go with a boy?" Lily's dreadlocked activist roommate thought that "Yeah, she did." Mrs. Jones wept as she descended the dorm stairs to inform her husband of the ruin of their only child.	This is straight from Charlotte Temple. The melodrama is heightened by the family's intention to celebrate the virtue of their daughter. It's ironic.
Necessary Digression Lily fell immediately asleep after stumblingly boarding the plane, her head on Savage's shoulder. Angelique, however, eyed the well-dressed first class passenger in 4A, just beyond the economy class partition, with deep interest. She lurched into his elbow in passing toward the front lavatories, laughingly apologized, introduced herself, and accepted his offer of a duty free cocktail. His name, she learned, was Dennis Morris, and he dealt in plastics. "The reader no doubt has already developed the character of [Angelique]: designing, artful, and selfish,... she was heartily weary of the retired life she led at school, wished to be released from what she deemed a slavery, and to return to that vortex of folly and dissipation which had once plunged her into the deepest misery; but her plan she flattered herself was now better formed: she resolved to put herself under the protection of no man till she had fast secured a settlement.and attack the heart of [Dennis Morris]. She soon discovered the partiality he entertained for her nation; and having imposed on him a feigned tale of distress, ... she wished for nothing more than an opportunity to leave a course of life which her soul abhorred; but she had no friends to apply to, they had all renounced her, and guilt and misery would undoubtedly be her future portion through life" (Rowson 53-54). By the time the plane touched down in New York, the newly widowed Mr. Morris had invited Angelique out for dinner, and within the week she moved into his spacious Park Avenue apartment. A Mistake Discovered New York began well. Savage put Lily up in a nice hotel near Central Park, since he lived in a small loft with a friend, Jason Belmont. They shopped and ate out, he bought her gifts and brought her flowers, and she felt at first baffled by the downcast eyes of the hotel doorman when she and Savage returned from an evening out. But by the end of the second week, Savage began to speak curtly and move restlessly. "Is anything wrong?" asked Lily. "No, nothing," replied Savage. * * *	In Charlotte Temple, Charlotte's corrupt French friend goes through more men before she latches onto a gullible, rich one on her way to America from England. Again, the baseness of her character is an unabashed indictment of the French. She is so two-dimensional as to have no qualities aside from her deceit and selfishness. Also, since she is in league with a seducer, who shows qualities of Satan, she herself is witch-like. See Coquetry.
Savage ran after a dark-haired woman, holding out to her the suede clutch bag she had accidentally left on the counter at a hair salon on Lexington. Struck by the stranger's courtesy, Julie Merritt thanked him profusely, at first on the street, and then in a Starbucks over tall hot ciders. They arranged a date. Savage thought of Lily reading in her hotel room, but every time he thought to back out, he was arrested by Julie's well-bred grace and the shocking strength of the connection he already felt to her. * * *	This is a simplified incident from Charlotte Temple in which Montraville meets a new object of his affections by returning something she had lost--by being a gentleman.
"For a week?" Lily collapsed on her hotel bed in disbelief. "I'm sorry. I can't say no to this job." Savage had explained that he had to go conduct a market survey in Philadelphia for a week. He gazed past Lily at the hotel painting above the bed, deer drinking from a forest stream. Lily had been crying, he could tell by the raw pinkness around her eyes. "You don't understand, it's--" She struggled to keep composed, and instead of speaking, pulled a pale wand from her bag, with two blue pluses in a little plastic window. "Oh my God." Savage recoiled. "You're pregnant? Are you sure?" Lily burst into tears. Savage watched her, puffy and weepy and miserable, and wished that he had not met Julie, so that he might be able to find Lily beautiful still.	Here, as in genuine 1790s seduction stories, we learn that the victim is pregnant without having ever been told explicitly that she had sex with her seducer. Another issue of consent and female agency, this means passing over an extremely important decision. It seems to imply that by her actions she has already consented to her seducer, or that sex is a natural consequence of traveling with a man. True or false in 1790s society, that would never hold up today.
A Man May Smile, and Smile, and Be A Villain During the week of Savage's business trip, Jason Belmont took Lily to a Planned Parenthood clinic where a grave-faced nurse practitioner itemized her options. Belmont took her out to dinners and sat with her in parks, and even went with her to a church service, for which she raised her opinion of him considerably. He had nothing like the magnetism of Savage, and Lily disliked him for his adult acne and the way he put his hand on the small of her back as they walked down the street. But she knew that he represented Savage, and she had never felt so alone, so she tolerated his friendship. She had called home once, to explain that she had gone on a trip with some friends, but her father had sounded so upset that she had hung up without giving him a phone number and not called since. The guilt of this racked her at night. * * * Jason had not understood at first his friend's infatuation with a churchgoing Midwestern girl ten years his junior. As he spent time with Lily, though, he found himself enthralled by her helpless sweetness, and jealous of the love she gave so exclusively to Savage. Jason had angered most of New York's women, and he mused on the benefits of somehow keeping Lily, like a pet. He certainly had the money, and he felt sure that she would neither choose to abort her baby nor be able to go back to school or face her parents, as timid as she was. The only obstacle was the marginal morality that kept Savage from abandoning Lily completely in order to be with Julie Merritt, whose age, situation, looks and manners so much better matched Savage's. Belmont schemed dastardly schemes and Lily thanked him dutifully for his attentions. It all came to a head on the bitterly cold morning of January 9th. Savage had returned the night before and mentioned to Jason that he planned to go see Lily in the morning. Jason took the subway to Lily's hotel early and took the elevator up to her room; he had made a copy of the room key to keep when he gave the spare back to Savage. Stealthily, he crept into the bedroom of the suite, where Lily slept deeply, almost laughably angelic under crisp white sheets. He left his coat and shoes draped over a chair. With extreme care not to wake her, he slid under the covers beside her and slowed down his breathing, pretending to sleep. Savage stood for a stony moment when he found them together, snowy-shouldered in a black overcoat. Was it possible that sweet, innocent Lily had been playing him all along? And this lying girl was the reason he couldn't be happy with Julie, who was perfect in all ways? Shocking even himself, Savage swept his arm across the table by the door, shattering the ceramic lamp against the wall. Lily woke in terror, took in the scene and shrieked. Jason pretended sleepiness, rubbing his eyes. "What the hell, man," he said.	Jason Belmont is a watered-down version of Rowson's character Belcour, who serves as a moral reference point for the seducer. He is pure bad: all the weaknesses and evils of the seducer archetype without the conscience that makes Savage (or Montraville in Charlotte Temple) dynamic and marginally sympathetic. See Bystanders and the Social World. If the seducer himself were as depraved as Belmont/Belcour, the reader could distance him or herself from him, instead of seriously considering the threat of falling victim to similar temptations.
Lily understood quickly. She tried to explain to Savage, "I swear I went to sleep alone, I would never, never cheat, I love you--" but her words were drowned in Savage's yelling. He fumed and cursed, gesticulating wildly at the foot of the bed, until the upstairs guests started to stamp on the floor and there came an authoritative "Housekeeping!" from the other side of the suite door. "I will send you money for the baby, if you're going to have it, or for the abortion, or whatever," said Savage, cooling down to low, acid clarity. "But I'm not coming back." He left without letting Lily explain herself and she wept miserably, not collected enough to think to run after him, as Jason stood and put his shoes back on.	Savage is released from responsibility to Lily because he believes her to be a coquette! As soon as a woman is even perceived to be unfaithful, she is no longer worthy of decent treatement or to associate with upper-class people, especially upper-class women.
A Trifling Retrospect "'Bless my heart,' cries my young, volatile reader, 'I shall never have patience to get through these volumes, there are so many ahs! And ohs! So much fainting, tears, and distress, I am sick to death of the subject.' My dear, cheerful, innocent girl, for innocent I will suppose you to be, or you would acutely feel the woes of [Lily], did conscience say, thus might it have been with me, had not Providence interposed to snatch me from destruction: therefore, my lively, innocent girl, I must request your patience: I am writing a tale of truth: I mean to write it to the heart: but if perchance the heart is rendered impenetrable by unbounded prosperity, or a continuance in vice, I expect not my tale to please, nay, I even expect it will be thrown by with disgust. But softly, gentle fair one; I pray you to throw it not aside till you have perused the whole; mayhap you may find something therein to repay you for the trouble" (Rowson 91). * * * Angelique, meanwhile, ate roast duck and artichoke hearts with Dennis Morris in the swankiest restaurants, went to the theater, attended formal events in gowns which he bought for her one-time wearing. Poor soft-hearted, knock-kneed Morris, who was so discerning about his wines, linens, tailors and fine art, was less so about his company. Angelique had figured him out in days, and he was blind to her deceitfulness. She played him like a puppet, but no harm done, and the two of them enjoyed their New York winter.	I quoted Rowson here directly because this passage is such a great example of the tone of her direct address. She entreats you, please, to read this with a specific attitude. She even blames YOU if you aren't moved--you're obviously spoiled or full of vice.
And What is Friendship But a Name Lily had not seen Angelique in two weeks when she caught sight of her through the glass storefront of a cafe. She was wearing beautiful clothing, and she was speaking, gesturing gracefully with her hands, to Morris. Lily thanked God for her good luck. She had never taken down Morris' phone number and so had not been able to contact Angelique about her pregnancy. She rushed inside, upsetting a waiter's tray of sandwiches, which slid and fell to the floor with a small, wet thump disproportionate to Lily's distress. She shouldered by, desperate to talk to a friend who might help her through the despair she had felt ever since she decided to keep the baby. "Angelique!" Angelique and Morris turned to Lily, surprised. "Thank God I saw you! I'm pregnant, and the hotel is making me leave, and Savage didn't leave enough money for everything. Can I sit? Oh God, you have no idea how awful it's been! You'll help me, right? It is so good to see your face, I can't even tell you." She tried to pull a chair from another table, but a waiter grabbed her arm. "Do you know this person?" he asked Morris. "No, I don't think I do," said Morris, "but Angelique must know her, since she said her name. That right, Angelique?" He overdid the French accent on "Angelique." Lily felt the waiter's grip on her arm and realized how disheveled and unhinged she must seem, bursting into a fine cafe and shouting about pregnancy. Angelique, it dawned on her as she watched the pale face, the vague smirk, the squint of the shadowed eyes, was not going to stoop to her level. Angelique had led her into this and would now step aside and avert her eyes as the largeness of Lily's sin dragged her down into real life. Betrayed! "I have never seen her before in my life." The waiter escorted Lily back to the sidewalk, where she collapsed and wailed like a crazed person. Pedestrians walked in wide circles around her.	The reversal of Lily and Angelique's social class becomes glaringly apparent at this point in the story. Authors of seduction stories want young ladies to fear the ruin that seduction will bring them, and this ruin is scarier if it is not only social, but also economic. Once her folly has lost her even her own seducer, Lily has no means to support herself! The fact that deceitful Angelique is living the high life only makes Lily's situation more pathetic.
Which People Void of Feeling Need Not Read A little boy found Lily Jones fainted on the front steps of his brownstone house and ran upstairs yelling for his mom. An ambulance sped Lily away to a hospital, where doctors and nurses clustered around her, drawing fluids and activating machines that beeped and gurgled in efforts to diagnose this pretty, blond-haired runaway. In a lucid moment, Lily was able to blurt out Savage's name, a few details of the recent past and thankfully, her phone number. The hospital staff dialed and Lily's parents raced to New York with no regard for highway speed limits. No one in the hospital had seen such a case, and the nurse's station buzzed with talk of the girl in intensive care who seemed to be dying of sadness. The doctors had a more conventional explanation that the shock of abandonment had exacerbated a mild heart condition and brought on a stroke. Lily was expected to recover, though, and it seemed a cruel fluke when she suddenly suffered a second paroxysm, only hours before her parents arrived to find her, sickly cool with the newness of death, her embryonic child perhaps still alive within her. So died Lily Jones, seduced, abandoned, alone in a hospital during the first day of second semester classes at her school, many miles away.	Seduced girls always die. Charlotte Temple dies in a poor family's house and her parents take her newborn baby to raise. Eliza Wharton (The Coquette) dies in an inn, her baby already dead. Endings are not happy. They are intensely melodramatic and expected, and they reinforce the central warning of the seduction genre: Don't fall victim to seducers, young ladies, or THIS will be YOU.
Retribution "But what are our reelings, compared with the pangs which rend a parent's heart? Th[ese] parent[s], I here behold, inhumanly stripped of the best solace of [their] 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 [Lily], 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!" (Foster 237). When Savage heard of Lily's death he was deeply sorry. He weaseled the truth out of a drunken Jason Belmont and ejected him from the loft, with a suitcase, in the middle of the night. Often while lying beside Julie, Savage's thoughts would turn to Lily, and he knew himself to be unworthy of the woman at his side. I am a villain, he would think, and then the next morning he and Julie would make sweet cheese blintzes and do the New York Times crossword puzzle together.	The double standard of gender in the 1790s hits us hard at the end of a seduction novel. The seduced woman dies, but what happens to the seducer? Not much. Sometimes he is shunned, but even then, he suffers only socially, and not physically or economically as did his victim. In Charlotte Temple as in my Lily, the seducer marries his new girlfriend, who is equal to him in social status, and is only sometimes a little sad about his poor, dead, seduced ex. The authors of these works want young ladies to feel the weight of responsibility for their own sexual and social conduct. Guard yourself, they tell us, because in the end it will be you and not your seducer who pays the price for your transgression.
Fin.