![]() Having Alex rescue Eliza is conforming to the tropes of romance novels. Doctor Cochran, Eliza’s uncle, is best known for inoculating the troops stationed in Morristown against smallpox. I do not think that these events happened since if they had, it probably would have come up in the letters that Hamilton wrote to Eliza during their engagement and marriage (her letters to him, unfortunately, have not survived) but are not out of the realm of possibility. They become reacquainted when she inoculates him against smallpox. The couple are reintroduced in Alex and Eliza when her carriage breaks down and he comes to her rescue. Hamilton’s letters show that he was smitten with Eliza, who he described as “unmercifully handsome,” and they were engaged within three weeks. The official reason for her visit was to aid her aunt and uncle (her uncle was surgeon-general to the Continental Army) but there was an unspoken assumption that she was there to find a husband among the Continental Army’s eligible officers. Hamilton and Schuyler met again three years later in February of 1780 when she came to visit the Continental Army headquarters in Morristown New Jersey, which I visited a year ago. ![]() A misunderstanding causes our hero and heroine to initially dislike each other. Alex is pranked by some of Eliza’s friends, who send him a note, supposedly from Eliza, saying that she will meet him in the barn at midnight. In Alex and Eliza, this makes Eliza dislike the young colonel, though he becomes smitten with her. Alexander Hamilton and Eliza Schuyler first met in 1777, when he was sent to relieve her father, General Philip Schuyler, of command after the Continental Army’s loss at Saratoga. We know when they met, when they started courting, when they got engaged, and when they got married but we don’t everything that went into getting from one of these steps to another.Īlex and Eliza is heavily influenced by Pride and Prejudice, mainly in how the dynamic between its two protagonists is set up. The courtship of Alexander Hamilton and Eliza Schuyler is an example of this. History itself often gives us only the bare bones of what happened and its the job of the author to provide the details. Historical fiction is by nature, speculative. Alex and Eliza is known as the fanfic/ romance novel version of this story, as opposed to more straightforward historical fiction works like The Hamilton Affair (which I did not care for) and I, Eliza Hamilton (which I haven’t read but probably won’t, lest it give me The Hamilton Affair PTSD), and is the least historically accurate of the three. In the wake of the smash-hit musical Hamilton, a number of novels have come out telling the love story of Alexander Hamilton and Eliza Schuyler. It’s very well written and the story is a page-turner. ![]() For starters, I very much enjoyed Alex and Eliza by Melissa de la Cruz.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |