The Story Mary Elanor Wilkins Freeman

Thank you to Barry for inspiring me to research and write this story about Mary Elanor Wilkins Freeman.

Mary Freeman was and is a celebrated writer. She wrote in a time when Women authors were not taken seriously. She also fought against her strict upbringing to say, Women can do more than Household chores.

Mary Freeman was born in Randolph Massachusetts.  Freeman's parents were orthodox Congregationalists, and her upbringing was very strict. Religious constraints play a key role in her Works.
 Individuals of this church typically had to testify to a dramatic, personal religious conversion experience. Maintaining a congregation of strictly "visible saints" meant holding incredibly high standards for piety and daily life.

Adolescence

As an adolescent, Mary 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.  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.

As the years passed, the contrast between Mary and her sister, Anna, became apparent. Anna willingly undertook domestic work. Mary would resist her mother's world of domesticity throughout her entire life.

In 1867, the family moved to Brattlboro,Vermont. After graduating high school she attended  Mount Holyoke Female Seminary,  for one year, from 1870 to 1871.

She left this school due to declining health and the institutions strict environment. 

She later finished her education at Glenwood Seminary.  The family's dry goods business in Vermont failed. The family returned to Randolph, Massachusetts. Freeman's mother died and Mary changed her middle name to Eleanor to honor her memory.

Mary Freeman's father died in 1883, leaving her without any immediate family and an estate worth only $873. She moved in with a friend, Mary J. Wales, and began writing. This was her only source of income.

Writings

Mary Freeman began writing stories for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. When the supernatural caught her interest, the result was a group of short stories which combined domestic realism with super naturalism and these have proved very influential. Her best known work was written in the 1880s. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published Short Stories and novels. She is best known for A Humble Romance and Other Stories.

 Mary Wilkins Freeman sought to demonstrate her values as a feminist. During the time which she was writing, she did this in non conventional ways. Through characters such as Louisa in her short story: “A New England Nun,” Freeman challenges contemporary ideas concerning female roles, values, 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' 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.

In 1892, she met Dr. Charles Manning Freeman, a non-practicing medical doctor seven years younger than she. After years of courtship the two were married on January 1, 1902. Immediately after, she firmly established her name as "Mary E. Wilkins Freeman", which she asked Harper’s to use on all of her work. The couple moved to Metuchen, where Freeman became a local celebrity for her writing. 

Her husband suffered from alcoholism and an addiction to sleeping powders. He also had a reputation for driving fast horses and womanizing. He was committed to the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane, and the two legally separated a year later. After his death, he left the majority of his wealth to his chauffeur and only one dollar to his former wife.

He left her only $1.00 in his will as an act of spite following the collapse of their marriage.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman did not need her husband's money when he died. She was a already a widely self-supporting author, when she married Charles. She continued to support herself on her substantial writing income.

She was a highly prolific and celebrated American author.

Although she produced a dozen volumes of short stories and as many novels, Freeman is remembered chiefly for the first two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories , and A New England Nun and Other Stories, and the novel Pembroke.

On a personel note, I wonder did her Husband Charles become an Alcoholic, drive fast Horses, and Womanize because of her success? Maybe he was jealous of her Fame, or the fact that she didn't need his money to survive.

Just a few of her Gems
Decorative Plaques (1883)

The Adventures of Ann (1886)
A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887)
The Revolt of Mother 
Jane Field (1892)
Giles Corey, Yeoman (play, 1893)
Comfort Pease and Her Gold Ring (1895)
Madelon (1896)
Once Upon A Time (1897)
Jerome, a Poor Man (1897)
Silence, and other Stories (1898)