The Struggle In Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's A New England Nun

There was a time, not long ago where women were submissive to their husbands. This means that they did every thing their husbands told them to and beyond. This includes household chores such as cooking, cleaning, tending to children. The chores are all completed while the husband while the husband is away at work or even while he is home. Even when the husband wants intimate interaction with his wife, she must go on his account. Many women were subject to this kind of lifestyle and so was Sarah Penn from the short story, “ The Revolt of Mother” by Mary E. Freeman. Sarah is selfless, bold, and submissive because of how life for women was during this era.

The setting of both stories reinforces the notion of women's dependence on men. The late 1800's were a turbulent time for women's roles. The turn of the century

Recognizing personal strengths and weaknesses is part of the ongoing process of bettering ourselves. In the novel, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, she explains the strengths and weaknesses over the character named Tita De la Garza. Within the context, Laura Esquivel develops Tita’s emotions through feminists. Tita is the novel’s protagonist, struggles her needs for belonging and security. As well as her desires for adventure, sex, and liberation. In Like Water for Chocolate, it simply explains that there is no such thing as a good or bad woman. Every woman in different in their own unique way. Laura Esquivel explains that women are capable of a variety of complex and often contrary emotions and

In many cultures, even today, there are stereotypes about women; i.e. that their job is to cook and clean, or that they are not as strong as men are. Many people would probably admit that they view men as tougher individuals whose responsibility is to protect and put food on the table. This theme of the male versus female power constitutes as prevalent in both Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. These authors intricately weave this idea into their novels through their characters’ specific duties, their characters’ behaviors and emotions, and the way children are viewed and treated according to gender. Both novels are set in the late 19th, early 20th century, but take

Both “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” center around two women who are repressed by their lives’ circumstances. However, outside of their feelings, their situations could not be more different. Miss Emily Grierson is trapped in a life of solitude, despondency, and desperation. The girl, or “Jig”, is equally as desperate, but her repression is not born of loneliness or restraint—it is the child of her freedom. Repression comes in several forms, but it will suffocate and consume you.

The time period between the late 1800s and early 1900s was a ground for many crucial changes for women and how they were viewed and treated. The right to their children, property, and earnings was granted to them during this time period ("Women Suffrage in the Progressive Era - American Memory Timeline- Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources - Library of Congress"). Many women, no matter what their occupation might have been, supported this movement ("Women Suffrage in the Progressive Era - American Memory Timeline- Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources - Library of Congress"). Female Writers were extremely proactive when it came to clearly displaying the mistreatment that women endured while society viewed it as right. One writer in particular, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, published a short story the displayed the injustice in the treatment. “The Revolt of Mother” clearly displays the repression of women in a society much like the one we live in today, and the story leaves the reader with an essential lesson of standing up for one’s self. This piece of work is heavily influenced by the oppression Freedom faced during her life time.

When Mary E. Wilkins Freeman authored “The Revolt of Mother,” women were instructed to be obedient to their husbands as they carried out their roles in the domestic sphere by cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children. Resultantly, in the short story, Freemen must subtly skirt around the issue of Sarah Penn taking a stand over her husband by making Sarah appear to be subservient even when she takes a stand against her husband Adoniram. One example of Sarah acting subservient, but still taking a stand for her beliefs, occurs when she says to her husband “A barn? You ain't goin' to build a barn over there where we was goin' to have a house, father?" (Freeman 2). Despite using punctuation that indicates a question,

In Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s short story, “A New England Nun,” she writes about a woman who is very independent, but is unsure about marriage. The theme of “A New England Nun,” would be independence.

The inevitable demise of imagination that Louisa confronted exposed her pure nature with a prevalent notion of significant inner dimensions. For instance, she wanted to regain her innocence and provide an energetic transitional state of authority for herself. Louisa respected the natural beauty of life, which captivated her spiritually throughout the novel by accepting her fate. She demonstrated a compelling structure of fiery, impetuous, and judicious traits of herself in reference to fear of life itself. In “Hard Times and The Structure of Industrialism: The Novel as Factory” Johnson stated, the phenomenon of the industrial city in London increasingly grew into an incorporate power of social and economic organizations” (128).

In this short story, Louisa’s internal independence plays a major role in who she is as a woman. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman describes Louisa as an introvert because she is someone who enjoys being alone. She spends fourteen years of her life being isolated at home, waiting for her fiancé to come back from his job in Australia. During those years, she learns how to be by herself through the hard times and the pleasant ones “Louisa’s feet had turned into a path, smooth maybe under a calm, serene sky, but so strait and unswerving that it could only meet a check at her grave, and so narrow that there was no room for any one at her side” (Freeman 66). This demonstrates how she is so use to not having anyone by her side. This is why she creates her own path through all the dark times she had to face on her own. In many ways this can foreshadow the ending of the short story. This shows how she always counted on herself and

Lastly, the most compelling piece of evidence in the text which points to Louisa having obsessive compulsive disorder is found in her obsessive behavior which she displays throughout the majority of the story. This behavior is mostly shown by Louisa in her daily life as she is described washing her “tea-things” and polishing her china carefully as well as irrepressibly having to clean and tidy up after Joe Dagget leaves her home. Moreover, this fact is seemingly presented in the text as the author writes, “Then she set the lamp on the floor, and began sharply examining the carpet. She even rubbed her fingers over it, and looked at them. ‘He’s tracked in a good deal of dust,’ she murmured.

In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, Louise Mallard is caught in a cold marriage and a constrictive house. The same goes for Sarah Penn in Mary Wilkins Freeman “The Revolt of “Mother.’” Despite the fact that both stories share the topics of imprisonment and control, physically and inwardly, the ladies in the stories have diverse responses to their circumstances. Sarah battles the confinements without holding back, taking her opportunity, while Mrs. Mallard adopts a motionless strategy and is just liberated through the death of Mr. Mallard.

The novel The House on Mango Street is filled to the brim with women who are unhappy and unsatisfied with their lives. Readers meet wives who are destined to spend their lives in the kitchen, mothers who waste away cleaning up after their kids, and girls who are stuck in a hole that they can’t escape. Through Sandra Cisneros’s use of literary devices such as motifs, symbolism, and imagery, we are able to learn that the women end up in these situations by conforming to femininity, and we find the theme of women are often held back by their own gender roles.

These two stories exemplify the epitome of women’s repression in the male-dominated society of the late nineteenth century by conveying the feelings of

In her 1869 2-part novel Little Women, Louisa May Alcott deals with the stereotypes of women of the 19th-century and takes them on head-on. Each of the girls has their own quirks which lead to a less-than-conventional series of events throughout the novel. This is all set up in chapter 1, when the girls are discussing how they are going to get presents for Christmas. (Alcott 1). In this chapter, we learn about who the girls are and what their personalities consist of. Some are normal and conservative for the time, while others are more non-conventional to say the least.