“You Can’t Compete Where You Don’t Compare”: The Coquette and the Long History of Weaponized Womanhood

The Coquette exposes how patriarchal culture scripts women into competition, surveillance, and moral judgment, and reality TV merely updates the same blueprint. The famous modern line, “You can’t compete where you don’t compare,” is not a new revelation but the recycled logic that condemned Eliza Wharton centuries ago.

Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette looks like a sentimental cautionary tale on the surface, but underneath it is a study of how women are trained to turn on each other. When Eliza receives the advice to “let sincerity and virtue… lead you to happiness” (Letter 19), the language is framed as loving guidance, but it functions as discipline. “Sincerity” and “virtue” are not feelings; they are requirements, prerequisites for being accepted into the narrow definition of respectable womanhood.

Notice that the warning is not about men at all. It’s about other women. It’s about reputation, gossip, and the emotional labor of managing how you appear. The advice is less “live a virtuous life” and more “don’t give other women ammunition.” That’s the trap: virtue is not personal, it’s performative, always measured by the female gaze trained to monitor and correct.

This logic survives today, only now it’s packaged as entertainment. Reality TV shows like The Bachelor thrive because they make women compete for validation while insisting that “the good ones” play by the rules of etiquette and emotional restraint. Contestant Corinne Olympios once declared, “You can’t compete where you don’t compare,” which sounds like empowerment until you realize it reinforces the exact hierarchy that destroyed Eliza. Women are ranked, measured, dismissed, and rewarded based on patriarchal values: beauty, desirability, and pliability.

What’s fascinating is that The Coquette also gives us moments of potential solidarity that are quickly shut down. When Eliza’s friends defend her, they couch their support in apology, always conscious of respectability politics. Their care is conditional, monitored, and ultimately fragile. Exactly like the social media environment today, where women are expected to be supportive but only within approved boundaries: uplift, but don’t disrupt; empower, but don’t offend; love each other, but don’t threaten the order.

Foster’s novel isn’t a moral lesson; it’s a warning. The system isn’t broken; it’s functioning exactly as intended. Women are still encouraged to compare, compete, and critique each other ruthlessly. Because as long as women are busy fighting each other, they’ll never notice the structure that pits them against one another in the first place.

True liberation requires recognizing the script and refusing the role.