The Character of the “New England Nun” Protagonist
Louisa Ellis is a protagonist of a short story “A New England Nun”, written by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. She lives alone with her dog and a bird, and spends her days sewing; drinking tea with a queen’s manners or cleaning up her accurate housing. This woman waits for her marriage for fourteen years. She is the only master of her life, in which there is no place for men. She seems to feel comfortable within such a framework and content with her lonely life. Through the depiction of Louisa Ellis, the author emphasizes that a happiness of a person does not depend on the life circumstances or other people, relying only on the person’s perception of a world around her.
She did not follow …show more content…
She manages to find delight in the minor issues like drawing a needle through the fabric or drinking tea from a china all her neighbors hide in the parlors. What she felt cannot be called happiness; it was rather a conciliation and feeling of peacefulness, but she did not demand anything else. The day after the breakup with Joe Dagget, she “felt like a queen who, after fearing lest her domain be wrested away from her, sees it firmly insured in her possession” (Wilkins Freeman, 16). The author compares the rest of Louisa’s days with a range of the pearls in the rosary, identical, but smooth and innocent. Her thankfulness for it leaves no doubt that she was content with her …show more content…
First, she was tidy and meticulous. Louisa had “almost the enthusiasm of an artist over the mere order and cleanliness of her solitary home”. The situation when she rearranged the books on the table after Joe shows even her scrupulousness. This helped her to be satisfied by the mere things like sewing of the ripped seam or polishing of windowpanes “until they shone like jewels”. Her serenity made the life in the countryside uneventfulness more comfortable. The very description of nature near Louisa’s house shows that only those, who look for solitude, may be happy
Louisa Ellis is a protagonist of a short story “A New England Nun”, written by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. She lives alone with her dog and a bird, and spends her days sewing; drinking tea with a queen’s manners or cleaning up her accurate housing. This woman waits for her marriage for fourteen years. She is the only master of her life, in which there is no place for men. She seems to feel comfortable within such a framework and content with her lonely life. Through the depiction of Louisa Ellis, the author emphasizes that a happiness of a person does not depend on the life circumstances or other people, relying only on the person’s perception of a world around her.
She did not follow …show more content…
She manages to find delight in the minor issues like drawing a needle through the fabric or drinking tea from a china all her neighbors hide in the parlors. What she felt cannot be called happiness; it was rather a conciliation and feeling of peacefulness, but she did not demand anything else. The day after the breakup with Joe Dagget, she “felt like a queen who, after fearing lest her domain be wrested away from her, sees it firmly insured in her possession” (Wilkins Freeman, 16). The author compares the rest of Louisa’s days with a range of the pearls in the rosary, identical, but smooth and innocent. Her thankfulness for it leaves no doubt that she was content with her …show more content…
First, she was tidy and meticulous. Louisa had “almost the enthusiasm of an artist over the mere order and cleanliness of her solitary home”. The situation when she rearranged the books on the table after Joe shows even her scrupulousness. This helped her to be satisfied by the mere things like sewing of the ripped seam or polishing of windowpanes “until they shone like jewels”. Her serenity made the life in the countryside uneventfulness more comfortable. The very description of nature near Louisa’s house shows that only those, who look for solitude, may be happy