Both novels and plays were attacked in late-eighteenth-century America as frivolous, extravagant, and morally bankrupt. Cultural leaders like Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that novels were a "great obstacle to education" and insisted that Americans should spend their time in other pursuits. During the Revolutionary War, theater was seen as so dangerous that Congress declared it illegal. Imagine that you have been hired to produce a public relations campaign to promote either Susanna Rowson's novel Charlotte Temple or Royall Tyler's play The Contrast. How will you assure eighteenth-century Americans that the novel or play is worth their time and that it in fact produces good morals?