Redefining place: femes covert in the stories of Mary Wilkins Freeman

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1996 by Janice Daniel

Because these two stories involve single women, a temptation would be to make the hasty conclusion that Freeman is recognizing the unmarried state as the only one in which her protagonists can create places of self-affirmation. Of course, when we examine probably her best-known story, we will quickly see the error in such an assumption. In "The Revolt of `Mother,'" Sarah Penn has been confined to a "box of a house" (452) for 40 years while patiently waiting for the promised new, larger dwelling. When she learns that her husband is planning another new barn in the exact space where the new home would have been, she tries desperately to dissuade him. Her mode of persuasion is to show him all the spaces that have previously defined her place for so long: the kitchen in which "I've had to work in an' eat in an' sit in since we was married," the bedroom which is "all the room I've had to sleep in forty year," and the pantry where "I've been takin' care of the milk of six cows in this place" (455-56). When Adoniram refuses to budge and she moves their entire household into the barn during his absence, Sarah creates the space she needs to continue comfortably in her domestic role.

There is nothing to indicate that she in unhappy in this role; she consistently provides care and attention to her family, but it is her decision that redefines their space and hers. The community sees her as "the staid, independent figure on the side track ... a lawless and rebellious spirit," and her own words confirm their opinion: "I've got my own mind an' my own feet, an' I'm goin' to think my own thoughts an' go my own ways" (464 65). Sarah empowers herself with the authority necessary to create her different space, and her actions are "purely original undertakings" (463) in the context of nineteenth-century expectations for women. Interestingly, it is her daughter who first plants the idea with a casual suggestion that they have her wedding in the new barn, a most unlikely place for the average New England young girl to consider. Perhaps we can conclude that the younger generation after Sarah will tend to fit easily and more naturally into places provided by other women rather than by those determined by patriarchal tradition.

In many of Freeman's stories, being married or single is not the factor in the protagonist's definition of her space. The predominant issue enhanced by enclosure images may simply be one central focus in her life resulting from an unusual personality trait sometimes misunderstood by others in her community. In some cases, her space reflects choices that define for her those places that set her apart from her female contemporaries as being atypical or uncommon. Consequently, Freeman is consistent with the use of enclosure images to reveal, not restrictive options, but preferences for place that reveal individuality. In "Christmas Jenny," for example, the protagonist's love for flora and fauna is manifested in Freeman's rhetoric of containment. Jenny's yard is perpetually covered with food for the wildlife, and her house contains cages and hutches for the confinement of birds, rabbits, and field mice that are ill or injured. She even denies herself the "new caliker dress" (166) she needs for her own covering in order to have enough money for the animals. Her means of livelihood is the sale of vegetables in the summer and Christmas greenery in the winter, and she is a familiar sight to the villagers when she descends the mountain as an enclosed figure "laden with green peas and string-beans and summer squashes" (167) or burdened with evergreen wreaths strung on her arms, with sprays of ground-pine wound around her shoulders, and with baskets containing both greenery and flowers. Jenny is like "a broad green moving bush" (163), a metaphor for her self-enclosure within a vocation that reflects both her individual interests and her indifference to public scrutiny.