Mary Freeman

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, novelist and short story writer, was born in 1852 in Randolph, Massachusetts.  As an aside, I myself grew up in Attleboro, which is south of Boston and attended both elementary and high school there. Interestingly, none of my English teachers ever mentioned Ms. Freeman nor did we ever read any of her writings even though she was, far and away, the most famous literary figure to emerge from the community. 

Mary Freeman’s parents were Congregationalists and her upbringing was very strict. For this reason, religious constraints figured prominently in her creative fiction. When her father suddenly died in 1883, Eleanor began writing as this was her only source of income. She later married, but her husband, both an alcoholic and womanizer, eventually was admitted to an insane asylum. Much of Ms. Freeman's writing centered around women asserting their will in order to pursue creative goals and live fulfilled lives.

     As an adolescent, Freeman was increasingly caught 

between the need for her mother's love and her instinct 

to avoid becoming her mother and subsiding into her 

mother's form of passivity. Despite continuous pressure 

from her mother to participate in domestic chores, 

no amount of discipline could pull Mary away from 

her reading to the reality of hated kitchen work. 

     According to Edward Foster's biography of Freeman, 

"Disliking her household duties, she avoided them, 

nor could she be moved by disciplinary tactics." It 

is clear that a growing tension between Mary and 

her mother centered on her resistance to undertaking

 the tasks expected of a "good girl." (Wikipedia)

In the Freeman home, Mary’s sister, Anna, willingly took on all the traditional household chores, while Mary stubbornly refused. Her mother constantly browbeat the defiant sister, causing Mary Eleanor to “quietly reject” her parent’s expectations.”

“She would resist her mother's world of domesticity 

throughout her entire life. Her story, "The Revolt 

of Mother" is especially significant in this context, 

for the story seems to have been written as a tribute 

to her mother's work, a form of work she had 

never valued in her mother's lifetime.” (Wikipedia)

The Revolt of Mother is a hilarious short story, where a woman is constantly frustrated and stymied by her husband, who would rather build a lavish barn for his cattle than renovate the dilapidated log cabin his long-suffering wife and children have subsisted in for decades. But the clever and ever-resourceful wife finally  turns the tables on her self-serving husband when she transfers all the furniture - beds, stove, cooking utensils, etc. into the new barn, while relocating the livestock to the empty house, while the husband is away buying a horse. The plot to this short story is utterly unique and shows the author at her finest.

The following is a section from the beginning of the story:

"FATHER!"

"What is it?"

"What are them men diggin' over there in the field for?"

There was a sudden dropping and enlarging of the lower part of the old man's face, as if some heavy weight had settled therein; he shut his mouth tight, and went on harnessing the great bay mare. He hustled the collar on to her neck with a jerk.

"Father!"

The old man slapped the saddle upon the mare's back.

"Look here, father, I want to know what them men are diggin' over in the field for, an' I'm goin' to know."

"I wish you'd go into the house, mother, an' 'tend to your own affairs," the old man said then. He ran his words together, and his speech was almost as inarticulate as a growl.

But the woman understood; it was her most native tongue. "I ain't goin' into the house till you tell me what them men are doin' over there in the field," said she.

Then she stood waiting. She was a small woman, short and straight-waisted like a child in her brown cotton gown. Her forehead was mild and benevolent between the smooth curves of gray hair; there were meek downward lines about her nose and mouth; but her eyes, fixed upon the old man, looked as if the meekness had been the result of her own will, never of the will of another.

They were in the barn, standing before the wide open doors. The spring air, full of the smell of growing grass and unseen blossoms, came in their faces. The deep yard in front was littered with farm wagons and piles of wood; on the edges, close to the fence and the house, the grass was a vivid green, and there were some dandelions.

The old man glanced doggedly at his wife as he tightened the last buckles on the harness. She looked as immovable to him as one of the rocks in his pastureland, bound to the earth with generations of blackberry vines. He slapped the reins over the horse, and started forth from the barn.

"Father!," she said.

The old man pulled up. "What is it?"

"I want to know what them men are diggin' over there in that field for."

"They're diggin' a cellar, I s'pose, if you've got to know."

"A cellar for what?"

"A barn."

"A barn? You ain't goin' to build a barn over there where we was goin' to have a house, father?"

The old man said not another word. He hurried the horse into the farm wagon, and clattered out of the yard, jouncing as sturdily on his seat as a boy.

* * * * *

In the next excerpt from the story the wife implements her grand scheme:

During the next few hours a feat was performed by this simple, pious New England mother which was equal in its way to Wolfe's storming of the Heights of Abraham. It took no more genius and audacity of bravery for Wolfe to cheer his wondering soldiers up those steep precipices, under the sleeping eyes of the enemy, than for Sarah Penn, at the head of her children, to move all her little household goods into the new barn while her husband was away.

Nanny and Sammy followed their mother's instructions without a murmur; indeed, they were overawed. There is a certain uncanny and superhuman quality about all such purely original undertakings as their mother's was to them. Nanny went back and forth with her light loads, and Sammy tugged with sober energy.

At five o'clock in the afternoon the little house in which the Penns had lived for forty years had emptied itself into the new barn.

Every builder builds somewhat for unknown purposes, and is in a measure a prophet. The architect of Adoniram Penn's barn, while he designed it for the comfort of four-footed animals, had planned better than he knew for the comfort of humans. Sarah Penn saw at a glance its possibilities. Those great box-stalls, with quilts hung before them, would make better bedrooms than the one she had occupied for forty years, and there was a tight carriage-room. The harness-room, with its chimney and shelves, would make a kitchen of her dreams. The great middle space would make a parlor, by-and-by, fit for a palace. Up stairs there was as much room as down. With partitions and windows, what a house would there be! Sarah looked at the row of stanchions before the allotted space for cows, and reflected that she would have her front entry there.

At six o'clock the stove was up in the harness-room, the kettle was boiling, and the table set for tea. It looked almost as home-like as the abandoned house across the yard had ever done. The young hired man milked, and Sarah directed him calmly to bring the milk to the new barn. He came gaping, dropping little blots of foam from the brimming pails on the grass. Before the next morning he had spread the story of Adoniram Penn's wife moving into the new barn all over the little village. Men assembled in the store and talked it over, women with shawls over their heads scuttled into each other's houses before their work was done. Any deviation from the ordinary course of life in this quiet town was enough to stop all progress in it. Everybody paused to look at the staid, independent figure on the side track. There was a difference of opinion with regard to her. Some held her to be insane; some, of a lawless and rebellious spirit.

Friday the minister went to see her. It was in the forenoon, and she was at the barn door shelling pease for dinner. She looked up and returned his salutation with dignity, then she went on with her work. She did not invite him in. The saintly expression of her face remained fixed, but there was an angry flush over it.

The minister stood awkwardly before her and talked. She handled the pease as if they were bullets. At last she looked up, and her eyes showed the spirit that her meek front had covered for a lifetime.

"There ain't no use talkin', Mr. Hersey," said she. "I've thought it all over an' over, an' I believe I'm doin' what's right. I've made it the subject of prayer, an' it's betwixt me an' the Lord an' Adoniram. There ain't no call for nobody else to worry about it."

"Well, of course if you have brought it to the Lord in prayer, and feel satisfied that you are doing right, Mrs. Penn," said the minister, helplessly. His thin gray-bearded face was pathetic. He was a sickly man; his youthful confidence had cooled; he had to scourge himself up to some of his pastoral duties as relentlessly as a Catholic ascetic, and then he was prostrated by the smart.

"I think it's right jest as much as I think it was right for our forefathers to come over from the old country 'cause they didn't have what belonged to 'em," said Mrs. Penn. She arose. The barn threshold might have been Plymouth Rock from her bearing. "I don't doubt you mean well, Mr. Hersey," said she, "but there are things people hadn't ought to interfere with. I've been a member of the church for over forty year. I've got my own mind an' my own feet, an' I'm goin' to think my own thoughts an' go my own ways, an' nobody but the Lord is goin' to dictate to me unless I've a mind to have him. Won't you come in an' set down? How is Mis' Hersey?"

"She is well, I thank you," replied the minister. He added some more perplexed apologetic remarks; then he retreated.

He could expound the intricacies of every character study in the Scriptures, he was competent to grasp the Pilgrim Fathers and all historical innovators, but Sarah Penn was beyond him. He could deal with primal cases, but parallel ones worsted him. But, after all, although it was aside from his province, he wondered more how Adoniram Penn would deal with his wife than how the Lord would. Everybody shared the wonder. When Adoniram's four new cows arrived, Sarah ordered three to be put in the old barn, the other in the house shed where the cooking-stove had stood. That added to the excitement. It was whispered that all four cows were domiciled in the house.

Toward sunset on Saturday, when Adoniram was expected home, there was a knot of men in the road near the new barn. The hired man had milked, but he still hung around the premises. Sarah Penn had supper all ready. There were brown-bread and baked beans and a custard pie; it was the supper that Adoniram loved on a Saturday night. She had on a clean calico, and she bore herself imperturbably. Nanny and Sammy kept close at her heels. Their eyes were large, and Nanny was full of nervous tremors. Still there was to them more pleasant excitement than anything else. An inborn confidence in their mother over their father asserted itself.

* * * * *

Through her different genres of work including children's stories, poems, and short stories, Mary Wilkins Freeman sought to demonstrate her values as a feminist. During the time which she was writing, she did this in nonconventional ways; for example, she diverged from making her female characters weak and in need of help which was a common trope in literature. Through characters such as Louisa in her short story: “A New England Nun,” Freeman challenges contemporary ideas concerning female roles, values, and relationships in society. Also, Freeman's short story “The Revolt of 'Mother" illustrated the struggles of rural women and the role they played within their families. “The Revolt of 'Mother” initiated the discussion on the rights of rural woman, went on to inspire many more pieces discussing the lack of control rural woman had over families finances, and looking to improve the structure of farm families in the early twentieth-century (Wikipedia)

What follows below was taken verbatim directly from the website, AmericanLiterature.com. My original intent was to either paraphrase the commentary or rework it in my own words, but the material was so incredibly well written there was little possibility of doing it proper justice so I much rather give the authors full credit.

* * * * *

What is "The Revolt of Mother" about?

The Revolt of Mother follows Sarah Penn, a hardworking New England farm wife, who has waited forty years for her husband Adoniram to build the house he promised her when they married. Instead of the house, Adoniram builds a second barn on the very spot where the house was to stand. While her husband is away for a few days buying a horse in Vermont, Sarah quietly moves the entire household -- furniture, dishes, and children -- into the new barn and transforms it into a home. When Adoniram returns to find his family living among the stalls, he breaks down in tears and promises to put up partitions and buy furniture.

Why does Sarah Penn move her family into the new barn?

Sarah moves into the barn because Adoniram has repeatedly broken the promise he made forty years earlier to build her a proper house. When she sees him pouring the family's savings into a second barn -- more comfortable and better built than the tiny house she has raised her children in -- she decides the barn will become her house. Her reasoning is moral rather than petulant: she believes Adoniram is lodging his dumb beasts better than his own flesh and blood, and she treats her move as an act of conscience, comparable in her mind to the Pilgrim Fathers leaving England for what rightfully belonged to them.

What does the barn symbolize in "The Revolt of Mother"?

The barn is the central symbol of the story, and it means different things to husband and wife. For Adoniram, the barn represents success, status, and his identity as a prosperous farmer -- a visible monument to forty years of labor. For Sarah, the barn represents a broken promise and the elevation of livestock above her own family. By the end of the story Sarah transforms the symbol: by moving in and claiming the barn as a home, she turns Adoniram's monument to agricultural success into a monument to her own quiet rebellion. The same building now testifies to a wife's authority rather than a husband's.

What are the main themes of "The Revolt of Mother"?

The central themes are gender roles and women's agency in a male-dominated household, broken promises within marriage, and the moral weight of duty versus self-determination. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman also explores the tension between faith and conscience -- Sarah treats her rebellion as a spiritual matter and defends it to the minister by invoking Scripture and the Pilgrim Fathers. A subtler theme is the value of domestic labor: Sarah's forty years of unpaid work inside the tiny house are invisible to Adoniram, whose attention is fixed on fields, barns, and livestock.

Is "The Revolt of Mother" a feminist story?

The story is widely read as an early feminist work, though it was published decades before American women could vote. Sarah Penn successfully asserts authority over a domestic space that her husband has ignored, and she does so without physical violence, without leaving, and without surrendering her identity as a wife and mother. Critics often place her among the "New Woman" figures emerging at the close of the nineteenth century -- self-aware, determined women who refused the older terms of marriage. Freeman herself later called the story her least truthful, insisting no real rural wife would have done what Sarah did -- a remark that has only deepened debate over the story's feminist force.

How does "The Revolt of Mother" end?

The story ends with Adoniram's complete surrender. He returns from Vermont to find his family eating supper in the harness-room of the new barn, the hired man milking cows that have been moved to the old barn and the shed. Stunned and frightened, he tries to ask what has happened and is quietly seated at the table by Sarah. After supper he goes outside, sits on the step, and begins to cry. He tells Sarah, "I'll put up the partitions, an' everything you want, mother -- I hadn't no idee you was so set on't as all this comes to." Sarah, overcome by her own triumph, covers her face with her apron. The ending is quiet, not triumphant -- a victory built on his recognition rather than her anger.

When and where is "The Revolt of Mother" set?

The story is set on a small farm in a rural New England village in the late nineteenth century, during a single spring and summer. The action moves between three spaces that the story keeps in deliberate contrast: the cramped original house (one kitchen, a tiny bedroom, a narrow stair), the ample old farm buildings, and the gleaming new barn at the center of the conflict. The village is small enough that Sarah's move becomes the town's entire news within a day -- men gather in the store to debate it, women rush between houses with shawls over their heads -- which is itself a feature of the setting.

When was "The Revolt of Mother" published?

The Revolt of Mother was first published in Harper's Bazar (spelled without the second 'a' at the time) in September 1890, and collected the following year in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's influential volume A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). It was an immediate popular success and has remained her most anthologized story. Freeman's own reputation rests largely on this period of her career, when she was producing tightly observed stories of rural New England women -- work that helped define late-nineteenth-century American regionalism alongside writers like Sarah Orne Jewett.

Why does the story use biblical names like Adoniram and Sarah?

The heavy use of Old Testament names -- Adoniram, Sarah, Samuel (Sammy) -- reflects the Puritan naming tradition still common in rural New England in the late 1800s, and it quietly reinforces the story's themes. Adoniram was a royal taskmaster in the Book of Kings, a fitting name for a husband who treats his household as a labor operation. Sarah shares her name with the biblical matriarch -- a woman who pushes back against her husband's decisions and helps shape the family's future. Freeman also saturates the story with scriptural language: Sarah is compared to a "New Testament saint," she invokes the Pilgrim Fathers, and she defends her rebellion to the minister as a matter between her, the Lord, and Adoniram.