By the Light of the Soul

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

As was the custom a young man had charge of the meeting and he stood with a sort of embarrassed dignity on the little platform behind the desk. He was reading a selection from the Bible. Maria heard him drone out in a scarcely audible "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth " and then she heard in a quick response a soft sob from the seat behind her.' (Excerpt from Chapter 1)

Genres: Classics

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and attended Mount Holyoke College (then, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for one year, from 1870–71. Freeman's parents were orthodox Congregationalists, causing her to have a very strict childhood.

Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works. She later finished her education at West Brattleboro Seminary. She passed the greater part of her life in Massachusetts and Vermont.

Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Her best known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life and are among the best of their kind. Freeman is also remembered for her novel Pembroke (1894), and she contributed a notable chapter to the collaborative novel The Whole Family (1908). In 1902 she married Doctor Charles M. Freeman of Metuchen, New Jersey.

In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Metuchen and was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

Reviews

[Ellen Hamilton]

I didn't know the author. I didn't know the title. The book just accidentally downloaded into my virtual library, and it was like Fate. Maybe it was to warn me about my future. I was certainly depressed, discouraged, and disheartened after reading it.

And I didn't even read it properly. I flew over the last hundred pages, trying to get the gist of the story while wanting to know what happens at the end before I went to sleep. That was a mistake. The ending bothered me so much, I couldn't sleep for a while. I wanted to cry but no tears came, and I felt like Maria.

I can't rate this book.. I just don't know how to. I loved the settings, the style of writing, the characters, but I hated the main plot. The main plot is a big factor in deciding how many stars the book gets, right? Right. So now, here I have a book that I love everything about except the main plot. So contradictory and so weird.

The most annoying thing was that they were married so young that it may have been null/void; if they knew, it could have saved them both a lot of trouble!!!

[Christina Clair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the deeply reflective nature of this book along with the New England setting back in the 1900s (when it was written). I loved the main character. The ending was unexpected.