Mary Wilkins Freeman's The Revolt Of Mother

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman was an exceptionally impressive author during her time. Her numerous works and short stories have caught the eyes of many simply because of her strong willed female protagonists and the way she historically documented early New England village life within her stories. Freeman is widely considered to be an influential contributor to the creation of short novels, especially short novels written for or about women. She was also very dedicated to her work and was extremely motivated by her need to portray her own ideas of feminism. Freeman also attacked themes such as realism, human nature, and rebellion which seem to illuminate aspects of her own personal life. The different kinds of relationships explored within Freeman’s …show more content…
A great example of women revolting comes from “The Revolt of Mother”, a very popular short story written by Freeman. Within the short novel, the protagonist is a women by the name of Sarah Penn. She is struggling with an internal conflict because her husband would not build her the house she knew her daughter and herself deserved and is instead building a new barn. Instead of disrespecting her husband by not caring for him anymore, she decides to take another approach. To test the limits in which she is tightly bound, Sarah decides to move all their belongings into the new barn while her husband was away looking for a horse. By giving Sarah a motive to revolt, Freeman is making a statement what was not seen during her time period. Usually, women would keep quiet and do exactly what their husbands wanted. This is not the only time Freeman takes the approach of rebellion. Within the story “A New England Nun” a reader would also recognize rebellion as a theme. The protagonist in the story is a women by the name of Louisa Ellis. From the beginning, the reader will understand that she is a very particular women and she enjoys the way she lives. We also find out that she is waiting on a man to return from war, because she has promised to marry him. However, when the man finally returns, we see Louisa dealing with an internal conflict that we did not originally expect: she does not like the way he lives. He goes around her house and manages to ruin everything. His hands are to big for the dishes, he gets mud on the floor, and he does things that Louisa Ellis does not enjoy. Rebellion in this story is shown in a different light. Instead of taking a big course of action, like we see in “The Revolt of Mother”, Louisa just decides to simply let him marry another women. In another story written about women, the two main characters actually revolt in a funny way. In a short story entitled “A Mistaken Charity”