A New England Nun
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Submitted by mik9601 on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Biographies
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A New England Nun
A New England Nun, written by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, is an excellent example of a short story with enduring merit, which demonstrates this author as a regionalist writer. This genre of writing is defined in the NTC Dictionary of Literary Terms as literature that focuses on a specific geographical region or location, and recreating as accurately as possible its unique setting, speech, customs, manners, and beliefs (184). Mary E. Wilkins Freeman depicts the life of Louisa Ellis in this short story as a spinster woman, who ultimately decides to go against the conventional norms of the era and remain a spinster. The term spinster, being referred to in this paper is of an older single woman, who has never been married. Spinster women were typically wealthy enough to not to have to work, allowing them time for the refinement of their domestic arts. This paper will focus upon Louisa Ellis, a spinster, and her achievements in the domestic arts no matter what form they took. Even though Louisa's fragile identity begins to splinter as she approaches her wedding day; although she is still able to maintain a self fulfilled and happy life.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman is often compared to Sarah Orne Jewett and other women writers of the late nineteenth century who made regionalism a focus of their writing. Freeman's heroines tend to be strong aging women isolated from the rest of society and compelled to forge their own way in the world. They face this task with Yankee stoicism. Unlike many earlier women writers, who championed the values of home, God, and family in their fiction, Freeman challenged these values and displayed a strong feminist consciousness" (Literature Resource Center). Freeman's writing were about "descendants of the Massachusetts Bay Colonists, In whom can still be seen traces of will and conscience, so strong as to be almost exaggerations and deformities, which characterized their ancestors"(Literature Resource Center).
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