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• 1 2018-05-02T00:30:22-07:00 Pretty Little Fool 11 Sarah Darwazeh gallery 2018-05-21T17:42:00-07:00

  
  The society Charlotte Temple lives in is a very conservative society that is filled with expectations. When Charlotte was still living with her parents, before meeting Montraville, she was viewed as the perfect daughter everyone expected her to be and she had a set of rules that she grew up with and abided by. One of the rules embdedded in her brain by her society and parents was the fact that she "should never read a letter given [her] by a young man, without first giving it to [her mother]", which was incidentally one of the first rules she broke when she accepted and read Montraville's letter.
  
  Throughout the novel, whenever Charlotte is told to do something that she was not taught to do, she often reacts as a child being told to misbehave, "but mommy said no" or "daddy wouldn't like it," instead of acting like a teenager who is wise enough to make her own choices. The society that Charlotte lives in is a closed-off society that raised Charlotte with many expectations to follow, and because no one taught Charlotte about the real world or the dangers lurking in it, Charlotte grew up to be a naïve woman that fell headfirst into Montraville's manipulative ploy.
  
  Charlotte is seduced and manipulated into the twisted plans of Montraville, who knows exactly what he is doing, since he, later on, starts regretting his actions by saying "she was innocent when I first knew her, it was I seduced her, had it not been for me, she had still been virtuous and happy in the affection and protection of her family" (Rowson 66).

  The song "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables perfectly fits the description of Charlotte Temple and her relationship with Montraville. 

  Then I was young and unafraid
  And dreams were made and used and wasted 
  But the tigers come at night
  With their voices soft as thunder
  As they tear your hope apart
  As they turn your dream to shame
  He slept a summer by my side
  He filled my days with endless wonder
  He took my childhood in his stride
  But he was gone when autumn came

  Relating Charlotte's situation with the lyrics of this song, Charlotte was young and so sheltered by her parents and society that she was not aware of what was happening. Because of the societal mimicking that goes on in the novel, Charlotte changes her attitude and actions based on who she is surrounded by. At first, she mimicks the perfect daughter and the perfect female figure that society expects her to be, yet when she meets La Rue, the French governess with a spotty past, she starts disregarding the expectations and instead, mimicks La Rue and Montraville and abides by their expectations of her instead.  

  I had a dream my life would be
  So different from this hell I'm living
  So different now from what it seemed
  Now life has killed the dream
  I dreamed

  "Life" referred to in the song can be seen to signify Charlotte's society, whether the British middle-class society she lived in before Montraville or the small early American society that she is introduced to after Montraville. Because of what happens to her, society burst her dream and gave her a reality check, showing her how cruel life really is.
  
   

  Rowson. Susanna. Charlotte Temple. 1794. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.