Analysis Of A New England Nun

762 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Summary essay of solitude

“A New England Nun” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman illustrates a woman’s struggle with the commitment of marriage after waiting fourteen years for her fiancee to return from Australia, where he stayed to support her. Freeman’s character, Louisa, constantly works on domestic house activities alone in her home. Joe’s entrance caused disruption in Louisa’s organized life. Louisa discovers that life is not what is seems and decides to become a nun. Although many feminists at the time rejected domestic house chores as a way to free themselves, Freeman shows her character embracing her domestic chores as a way to indulge in her solitude.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman wrote about deceptions through the lives of women in many of her stories. A critic magazine conducting a public opinion poll established Freeman as the best cultivating American womanhood author. According to Larry A. Carlson, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts on October 31, 1852 and passed away in Metuchen, New Jersey on March 13, 1930. After graduating high school, she moved to Vermont with her parents and began teaching school in 1873, after an unsuccessful attempt she began writing poetry and short stories; her first two collections of short stories for adults, A Humble Romance, and Other Stories and A New England Nun, and Other Stories, generally considered her finest work, established her reputation as a professional writer. She married Dr. Charles Freeman in 1902 and moved to his home in New Jersey, where she resided for the remainder of her life. Personal tragedy marked her later years; she began suffering from deafness in 1909, and she was legally separated from husband in 1922 as a result of his destructive alcoholism. Among her later works are t...

... middle of paper ...

...itics misinterpret the main argument of the text, they try to unsuccessful read the text, and do not understand the knowledge of the traditional notions of gender that these characters are portraying and interpreting (483-484).
“A New England Nun” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Freeman tells the story of Louisa Ellis, a women who is beyond her own control, becomes the answer to individualism. Throughout her entire life Louisa learns to value her solitary life. After being engaged for a short amount of time, Joe ends up leaving Louisa for another woman after coming back from Australia. Adhering to the belief’s in our society that a woman must be married to a man. However, it is this socially accepted situation which ends up teaching Louisa to love her freedom and independence. Freeman shows her character embracing her domestic chores as a way to indulge her solitude.

Show More
Related

  • Similarities Between Sweat And The Yellow Wallpaper

    1256 Words  | 3 Pages

    However, it introduces the nineteenth century idea of “the cult of domesticity”. Historian Barbara Welter wrote an article on the idea in 1966 that explains this early nineteenth century ideology that a woman 's role at home should focus on: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity (Welter 151). The cult of domesticity roughly breaks down to it being a woman 's duty to be respectfully religious, sexually pure before marriage, accepting of male dominance over women, and the overpowering idea that domesticity will preserve a woman from her own wandering

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: The Character of Lena Lingard

    1791 Words  | 4 Pages

    Romines, Ann. The Home Plot: Women, Writing & Domestic Ritual. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. 1992.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Jamaica Kincaid's 'Girl'

    1010 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the short story, “Girl,” the narrator describes certain tasks a woman should be responsible for based on the narrator’s culture, time period, and social standing. This story also reflects the coming of age of this girl, her transition into a lady, and shows the age gap between the mother and the daughter. The mother has certain beliefs that she is trying to pass to her daughter for her well-being, but the daughter is confused by this regimented life style. The author, Jamaica Kincaid, uses various tones to show a second person point of view and repetition to demonstrate what these responsibilities felt like, how she had to behave based on her social standing, and how to follow traditional customs.

    Read More

  • The Pastoralization Of Housework By Jeanne Boydston

    798 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Pastoralization of Housework” by Jeanne Boydston is a publication that demonstrates women’s roles during the antebellum period. Women during this period began to embrace housework and believed their responsibilities were to maintain the home, and produce contented and healthy families. As things progressed, housework no longer held monetary value, and as a result, womanhood slowly shifted from worker to nurturer. The roles that women once held in the household were slowly diminishing as the economy became more industrialized. Despite the discomfort of men, when women realized they could find decent employment, still maintain their household and have extra income, women began exploring their option.

    Read More

  • A Jury of Her Peers, by Susan Glaspell

    937 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mrs. Hale feels a natural responsibility to defend and protect Minnie Foster Wright through her connection as a fellow woman and housewife. Upon her introduction to Minnie through her home, Mrs. Hale finds an immediate connection. She understands Minnie’s life as a homemaker and a farmer’s wife and is quick to defend her when her skills as a wife and woman come into question. When the men recognize Minnie’s lackluster cleaning of kitchen towels Mrs. Hale retorts “[m]en’s hands aren’t as clean as they might be” (Glaspell 160). She asserts her loyalty to Minnie and notes that men are not always perfect or without blame, without “clean hands”. As a woman, Mrs. Hale easily sees herself in Minnie’s place and comes to her defense as if she were defending herself. It is easier to share her loyalty with a woman so much like her than it is to be loyal to men that act superior and do not understand the challenges of being a housewife. The men find a woman’s chores as petty, nothing but “trifles” (Glaspell 160).Scholar Karen Stein argues that it is these commonalities that create the responsibility of everywoman to defend one another (Ortiz 165). Mrs. Hale sees herself in every...

    Read More

  • The Grand Inquisitor Analysis

    1246 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mary E. Wilkins Freeman was from Randolph, Massachusetts, born on October 31, 1852. As an American writer, she was best known for her stories and writings depicting characters who endured frustrated lives in New England. In 1867, Mary Wilkins relocated with her family to Brattleboro,Vermont. After studying for a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which now is Mount Holyoke College, Freeman lived at home where she spent most of her time reading, and writing stories for children. In 1883, soon after the death of her parents, she decided to live with friends, returning back to her hometown of Randolph, Massachusetts. Also, during that same year, she published her first adult story in a Boston newspaper. The best of her work was done while

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper and A Doll’s House

    916 Words  | 2 Pages

    In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.

    Read More

  • Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood

    1363 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ation of men and women to the reader; we accept the cliché’s and gender-roles as the collective standard.

    Read More

  • "a jury of her peers" research paper

    785 Words  | 2 Pages

    Glaspell authored this feminist short story, now considered a classic and studied in many institutions of higher education, in 1917, a story that underwent reawakening in the 1970s (Hedges). As the investigation of Mr. Wright’s murder takes the sheriff of Dickson County, neighbor Mr. Hale, and their wives to the Wright farm, the story “confines itself to the narrow space of Minnie’s kitchen--- the limited and limiting space of her female sphere. Within that small space are revealed all of the dimensions of the loneliness that is her mute message” (Hedges). It is evident through Glaspell’s writing that Minnie Wright feels distress from being trapped in the confines of her kitchen with no telephone and no outreach to the world outside her husband’s farm. Mrs. Wright being quarantined to her own home every day--- a common occurrence in housewives of ...

    Read More

  • Medieval Food Essay

    914 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Nun or Prioress is on page 218 of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, seventh edition volume one. Her passage discusses her impeccable manners.

    Read More

  • Calvinism: A Look Into Domestic Life in Catherine Sedgwick's Novel, A New England Tale

    1165 Words  | 3 Pages

    Catharine Sedgwick’s novel, A New-England Tale, tells the story of an orphan, Jane Elton, who “fights to preserve her honesty and her dignity in a household where religion is much talked about but little practiced” (Back Cover). The story take place in the 1820s, a time when many children were suffering in silence due to the fact that there was really no way to get people to understand exactly how bad things were for them. The only way anyone could ever really get a true understanding of the lives of the children in these households would be by knowing what took place in their homes. Outside of the home these women seemed perfectly normal and there was not reason to suspect any crookedness. The author herself was raised by a woman of Calvinist religion and realized how unjust things were for her and how her upbringing had ultimately play at role on her outcome. Sedgwick uses her novel, A New-England Tale to express to her readers how dreadful life was being raised by women of Calvinist religion and it’s affect by depicting their customary domestic life. She takes her readers on an in deep journey through what a typical household in the 1820s would be like providing them with vivid descriptions and reenactments of the domestic life during this period.

    Read More

  • Women’s Fight for Social Equality

    802 Words  | 2 Pages

    Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” The American Family in Social Historical Perspective. Ed. Michael Gordon. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1978. 373-392.

    Read More

  • Feminism and Slavery

    2340 Words  | 5 Pages

    McKay, Nellie Y. "The Girls Who Became Women: Childhood Memories in the Autobiographies of Harriet Jacobs, Mary Church Terrell, and Anne Moody" in Tradition and the Talents of Women. Howe, Florence, ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

    Read More

  • The Feminine Mystique Analysis

    1418 Words  | 3 Pages

    Friedan frustratingly explains how women’s choices to revert back to domestic roles after World War II compromised women’s independence and identity. Friedan uses this frustration to revive modern feminism and extinguish the prison that gender roles had imprisoned women in. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan illustrates how women fell into the common portrayal of a housewife just fifteen years after the war and how “millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school…their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers…”(Friedan 61) and other description that fit the occupation of “housewife”.

    Read More

  • Nora's Decision to Leave in A Doll's House

    1431 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many women in modern society make life altering decisions on a daily basis. Women today have prestigious and powerful careers unlike in earlier eras. It is more common for women to be full time employees than homemakers. In 1879, when Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, there was great controversy over the out come of the play. Nora’s walking out on her husband and children was appalling to many audiences centuries ago. Divorce was unspoken, and a very uncommon occurrence. As years go by, society’s opinions on family situations change. No longer do women have a “housewife” reputation to live by and there are all types of family situations. After many years of emotional neglect, and overwhelming control, Nora finds herself leaving her family. Today, it could be said that Nora’s decision is very rational and well overdue.

    Read More

More about Analysis Of A New England Nun

Open Document