Coquette

Definition and stakes

Portrait of Charles Rivière Dufresny Charles Rivière Dufresny,  The Village Coquette; Or, The Supposed Lottery

“ Girard Let's renew our discussion and talk of Lisette again. Because, having so much power over her, being her neighbor, and a sort of surrogate parent, you are working hard to turn her into a coquette, instead of making her wiser.
Widow
Language of Paris. That's what will make her perfect.
Girard Some perfection! Alas, you make her worse, when you come here to refine her wit. You make her heart more false and more vain.
Widow At nine years, she was already a coquette in embryo.
”
Source: Gutenberg

Lady Isabel Burton,  The romance of Isabel Lady Burton (1897)

“ I have watched the victim of the heartless coquette—the young girl gazing with tearful, longing eyes for the man to ask her to dance to whom she has perhaps unconsciously betrayed her affection; she in her innocence like a pane of glass, the other glorying in her torture, dancing or flirting with the man in her sight, only to glut her vanity with another’s disappointment. ”
Source: Gutenberg

Get perspective with Kwize: daily news enlightened by great literature