A New England Nun and Other Stories

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

"A New England Nun" is the story of Louisa Ellis, a woman who has lived alone for many years. Louisa is set in her ways, she likes to keep her house meticulously clean, wear multiple aprons, and eat from her nicest china every day. She has an old dog named Caesar who she feels must be kept chained up because he bit a neighbor 14 years ago as a puppy. It was late in the afternoon, and the light was waning. There was a difference in the look of the tree shadows out in the yard. Somewhere in the distance cows were lowing and a little bell was tinkling; now and then a farm-wagon tilted by, and the dust flew; some blue-shirted laborers with shovels over their shoulders plodded past; little swarms of flies were dancing up and down before the peoples' faces in the soft air. There seemed to be a gentle stir arising over everything for the mere sake of subsidence -- a very premonition of rest and hush and night. This soft diurnal commotion was over Louisa Ellis also. She had been peacefully sewing at her sitting room window all the afternoon. Now she quilted her needle carefully into her work, which she folded precisely, and laid in a basket with her thimble and thread and scissors. Louisa Ellis could not remember that ever in her life she had mislaid one of these little feminine appurtenances, which had become, from long use and constant association, a very part of her personality. Also includes: "A Stolen Christmas," "Life-Everlastin'," "An Innocent Gamester," "Louisa," "A Church Mouse," "A Kitchen Colonel" and "The Revolt of 'Mother."

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, American, School, 19th Century, Novels

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1891

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

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here follows a free online link to the short story A New England Nun: https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/aml...

It is also available as an audiobook here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDDhr...

I am reviewing just this one story.

The prose is pretty, light and delicate, filled with details describing the interior of a house, china tea cups, lace on an apron and the pigment and texture of clothing. Sounds, colors, movements—all are described. The rhythm and repetition of daily life are detailed too, this last being an important element of the story. What is scarcely spoken of are feelings and thoughts. The lines capture a reserve in the central character’s personality and comportment.

Louisa Ellis is the story’s central character. The intricate delicate sewing of a perfect seam, not a stitch out of place, the polish and sheen of a meticulously washed and dried tea cup are of importance to her. Cleanliness and orderliness are supreme. She uses such good commons sense and is in such control of all her faculties, that I feel her to have no need of my compassion! The result being, I do not feel empathy for her.

Look at the title. It has a message. The book is not about a nun! It is about life in provincial New England at the end of the 19th century. The message of the book and its title are oblique. You are meant to think and figure out yourself what is being said. I like this. What have we learned about Louisa Ellis by the story's end?

What is drawn are the standards and moral constraints embedded in the rural New England way of life. I appreciate the steely, uncompromising hardness of character. I appreciate the paucity of chit-chat. The New England temperament is well drawn.

I both read the text and listened to the audio performance. The audio version is read by Nick Strudwick. It is easy to follow but is not read with flair. It is simply read; there is not a hint of feeling. Pauses interrupt the telling. These pauses are not due to a fault in how the story is told, but instead to the recording process at Librivox. They break the tempo and inhibit the flow of the story. Of course, it is delightful that such stories are provided free of cost.

I like this, but I do not love it. I need to feel for the characters of a tale.

[Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman mined the same territory in her native rural New England, for the stuff of short fiction, as her fellow regional Realist author Sarah Orne Jewett. Although Freeman made a point not to read Jewett's work, to keep from being unduly influenced, the two women share a deep sympathy for the people they wrote about, keen observation of human nature and an ear for dialogue, and a moral vision, as well as a literary school of thought and a common regional identity. Both were, IMO, profoundly gifted writers; my rating of this collection one star higher than I did Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories is simply owing to the fact that I happen to especially like a larger number of the stories included here. (Neither collection, of course, includes all of the stories either woman wrote.)

The 24 stories in this collection are, above all, explorations of human psychology, relationships and interactions. Their particular setting in time and place is well-realized (Freeman, for instance, reproduces the rural New England dialect with tape-recorder accuracy), but their themes are universal. Freeman's characters don't typically make ultra-dramatic moral decisions that impact the world on a big scale (their social environments are small and circumscribed), but they make real ones that affect how they treat other people, and who they themselves are as people. Life's circumstances aren't always kind in these stories, and rural New England isn't always the home of unalloyed virtue; the author is well aware of the selfishness, greed, and meanness of some humans, though her sympathies are with the opposite. But her characters aren't defeated by life, and her vision is never cynical. Only one story, "Life Everlastin,'" directly reflects her own Christian convictions; but several of them depict the role of traditional Protestantism (the title character of the title story isn't a literal nun) and church life in the rural New England communities of that day. (That's a picture that's not without its truthful shadings of pettiness, judgmental attitudes, and turf battles; but the mirror is held up, not to condemn, but to encourage improvement.). My personal favorite story is the often-anthologized "The Revolt of 'Mother,"" which packs a strong equalitarian feminist message. "A Kitchen Colonel" also explores atypical gender roles, this time with a male protagonist. Gentle, self-sacrificing (and sorely under-appreciated!) Abel Lee is one of Freeman's most endearing characters, at least in my estimation.

Fred Lewis Pattee, one of America's more prominent literary critics at the time the collection was published, contributes an over 19-page bio-critical introduction, which is insightful and worth reading. One of his comments makes a fitting conclusion to this review: "she sends her reader away always more kindly of heart, more tolerant, more neighborly, in the deeper sense of the word."

[Wanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

20 SEP 2015 - free download of author's page at Project Gutenberg. This title is not specifically named; however, A New England Nun may likely be contained within the short story collections. (Edit: It is not in any of the collections. Please see the other links provided herein.)

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/searc...

A New England Nun may be found here - https://archive.org/details/anewengla...

May be read online here - http://fullreads.com/literature/a-new...
(About 6 pages in a very easy-to-read format).

I love short stories. There is so much which is packed into so few pages.

I read A New England Nun over coffee this morning. Nothing whatsoever to do with the religious order of nunnery; rather, a comfortable discovery of one's own sense of life and happiness. Louisa waits 14 years to marry only to make a sacrifice of that love one week away from her wedding date. She realizes a young woman's promise need not become a woman's obligation.

I am marking this as read; however, I will be purchasing the Penguin book in order that I can dip into these stories as I please.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple years back, I read a modern paperback reprinting of some of this late 19th century author's works, Selected Stories of Mary E. Wilkins Freedman, and found her work rewarding enough that when I came upon a first edition copy of A New England Nun and other stories, I gladly bought it. The editor of the Selected Stories drew heavily on this book, which if I'm remembering rightly was the author's first collection, so I'd read many of the stories already. Instead of rereading them, I just read the ones that were new to me, so it feels a bit like cheating to mark this book as read, but I guess when it comes to my own goodreads shelves, I make the rules. And I'm so pleased to own my particularly lovely copy, it will warm my heart every time I see it here.

The stories are for the most part about poor rural New Englanders trying to uphold their standards and dignity. The tales are generally poignant and well written. I mostly agreed with the modern day editor's choices, but a couple of the new to me standouts included "Calla Lillies and Hannah," and "A Stolen Christmas."

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really only thought the first and last stories were worth reading. (I read some of the others , but skimmed alot of the rest.) A New England Nun and The Revolt of Mother were 4 star stories.

[Steve Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just a review of A New England Nun, though I would like to read the other stories in the collection at some point, at which point I'll update my review to include these too.

This is a short story written by Mary Wilkins Freeman written in 1891 about a woman, Louisa Ellis, who has been living along for many years waiting for her love to come home and marry her. He went off 14 years before to seek his fortune in Australia, but has finally come back and they are about to be married...

The story is set in rural New England in the late 19th century. There's some lovely descriptions of New England countryside, as well as some background details on the society and customs in that time and place in a New England village. The story starts out by detailing Louisa's home and her daily routines, and only then introducing Joe and the back story. The character of Louisa is not one we get to know deeply, not on an emotional level anyway, but we do get to know her from the little details about her daily life and her worries about the changes that marriage will bring.

While a quite straightforward story, it didn't go the way I expected it to, and the story and it's ending gave me plenty to think about and things I could relate to, even if only in a small way.

The story probably fits under the category of 'local colour' which is a genre description sometimes used disparagingly, as if it isn't in the top echelons of short story writing and only of interest for it's local setting. I don't think that's true, I think it speaks on much more universal themes than that, but I do enjoy local colour or regionalist fiction because I like being transported back to a particular time and place and getting a glimpse of what life was really like there and then.

So overall a good story, well worth reading unless you're only looking for heart rending emotion and breakneck plot or suspense. If you are, you'll probably be disappointed!

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've only read the title story, but I'm going to mark this as "read" for now. I did download the e-book of the entire collection, so I may revisit the rest as a whole someday.

I enjoyed this pretty well. I tend to like the mini-genre of fiction by 19th-century women that functions as proto-feminist, and I think the thing I actually like about them the most are how complicated they are to a feminist reading. Because, so often, they fail us a little, too.

This story is certainly one of an independent woman, who does not want to get married -- which presents a problem when her fiance of 14 years returns home. Louisa has lived alone for a decade, established the heck out of her routines, and pleases herself taking care of her home, for her own benefit. She likes her china and her sewing. Apparently, she also likes the being alone.

That's really the problem here -- she does not really seem to fit in a groove the reader can easily moralize. She isn't so independent that she's achieved beloved equilibrium, nor is she so independent she is ostracized. Her equilibrium is incredibly fragile, and as such it appears that Louisa's life is profoundly solitary and isolated. She knows who the popular people in her small town are, but she doesn't know them. She does not appear to belong, but she does not appear happy, either. If everything is in order, and no person or animal has created chaos, she can remain the queen of her kingdom. To me, these priorities aren't exactly strength. At all.

However, I like a story where a wedding is the problem instead of the resolution. And I like Joe, coming in and messing up the order of Louisa's books by accident, feeling sorry about it. There's a little more to Joe than meets the eye, and ultimately Louisa uses this to decide their problem. Her decision is made in diplomacy, leading to the most likely happiness of the most parties, but again it almost seems wrong to me. Does she make this diplomatic choice out of the goodness of her heart, or mainly because it will cause the smallest disturbance? It matters, to me, who she is via these choices.

But I think these are good problems to have, and I like trusting an author enough to give the problems to me.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary Wilkins Freeman’s story of a woman who weighs the benefits and drawbacks of married life in 1890s New England and chooses a life of solitude. The story centers around Louisa Ellis, who lives a peaceful life by herself. She cherishes her delicate daily rituals, her solitude, her independence. When her fiancé, Joe Dagget, returns from Australia with a fortune, fourteen years after last having seen her, Louisa is hesitant to give up the pleasant life she has led since his departure. She dreads a future in which his hulking masculine presence and his sloppy movements make her delicate rituals impossible. The truth is that she’s happy by herself. Unwilling to go back on her word, however, she agrees to marry him. One evening, she goes for a walk and overhears Joe and Lily Dyer discussing their feeling for each other: how they love one another but are going to leave one another because it is Joe’s responsibility to marry Louisa. Louisa realizes that both she and Joe are marrying each other more out of a sense of obligation than real commitment. The following day, Louisa manages to diplomatically extricate herself from the marriage by saying that she’s gotten used to living alone and wouldn’t know how to give up daily habits of solitude. Joe understands, and the two part. This story is significant for its bold representation of a woman who finds happiness outside of marriage, challenging commonplace notions that it is only in marriage that women can find true happiness.

[Megha Chakraborty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was food for the soul. I loved the slow paced and languid feel of each story, the detailed writing took me back in time and I understood the protagonist's actions. I could see the recurring theme of sacrifice in most of the stories, brings into perspective how much times have truly changed. Would love to have this one in my library :)

[Jaksen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this book. Written by a spinster (a term from her day) about mostly middle-aged and older women, who stay at home or who are forced to live with a brother or other male relative, and who often have a talent or ability they can not easily express in their little rural or semi-rural town and yet I loved it.

I imagined Emily Dickinson in the title role of some of the stories, as honestly, even in the present day of more choice and freedom I know very few women my age (middle-aged) who aren't or haven't been married. I had to really hunt through all my friends and cousins, etc., to come up with a woman who never married, or is unmarried past the age of 30. Shameful of me, too, to admit that I define so many women by who they married, or divorced or by who their current love interest is.

Sexist, much? (I mean, me.) But this writer awakened a lot of thoughts in me and caused me some self-introspection - and all from a short story writer who isn't well-known and lived the sort of life she quite often writes about: An older woman with few choices struggling to find solace, happiness and sometimes, a sense of community at a time when she's more likely to get pity, than understanding, from her friends and family.

Walker was also a friend and contemporary of Mark Twain. He praised her writing, much of which was first published in 'women's magazines' of the the late 1800's and early 1900's. She will not be everyone's cup of tea, but I thoroughly enjoyed her and sought out as many of her stories as I could find.

Oh, word of warning, she can be wordy and 'over-describe' things at times, but I loved her writing.

And this review comes from a woman who's fav. fiction is SF, horror and mystery!

[Izzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story describes a woman's life in the 19th century and the expectation of her getting married. While she is the perfect "houswife" she does not want to be married and do all the housework for others (husband, kids, company) she enjoys sewing, gardening, keeping everything in place and cleaning but only for herself and hates when people disturb her clean environment. She likes her control over her belongings and does not want to compromise all that in marriage, so she breaks the engagement.
This can be read as a comedy, because Louisa Ellis is so paradox and her cleanliness is so exaggerated.
I quite enjoyed the read.

[Jose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book. This collection of short stories seems modest in its narratives about the lives of mainly New England women who live in small rural villages and towns during the 1800's but each story is so epic, so well-written, so witty, that makes this book one of the best reads experienced. Some stories are so shocking, especially since I never thought of connecting certain issues with these characters. For instance, I started to read "Old Woman Magoun" and as is Freeman's common style of having the story unravel slowly like seeing the development of an unknown seed growing to a beautiful flower or a persistent weed, the story finally grew to something more annoying than a weed. I had stumbled upon a story about euthanasia, child marriage, and delusional justifications for murder from the most banal of characters. Its a great story in how it develops, and well it left me with uneasy questions. These questions revolve around saving others.

If you don't think you are interested in stories about New Englanders then be prepared to be surprised at how much you may like this book.

[Jackson Ault · Rating 5 out of 5]

A new england nun and other stories is collection peopled with virtuous and quite normal characters, and plots that reveal their virtues. Wether they're forced to look for work as in a "wayfaring couple" and leave their village on foot, or are forced to go hungry or be down on their fortunes as in the twelfth guest, or end up living in a church and refuse to leave at one's late status in life in "a church mouse." These stories show the goodness of people in a new england village and traces the piety thats so prevalent in their actions and social circumstances. Though a few stories do get dull as it may revolve around villagers social and romantic persuits, their is great descriptions and backstories that doesn't linger. The stories hold a vitality of not just a new but a humble perspective. The first half of the book is especially good, and i cant imagine characters saying much more than they had to at times. The characters arent pretentious and dont pry about or force the plot. Yet they are relatable and keep up with the happenings.

[Humphrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tend to think Mary Wilkins' early stories are her best -- "A New England Nun" is rightly regarded as her best, but a number of the preceding stories in this volume come close. "The Jamesons" is also good, particularly as a satire of the ethnographic participant-observer that so often narrates regional fiction (in this regard, The Jamesons belongs alongside Mary Murfree's novel In the Stranger People's Country). But on the whole I find Wilkins a bit less worthy of the attention as a top-tier regionalist than some of her overlooked peers (e.g., Mary Murfree). This is perhaps in part due to the fact that Wilkins is a comparatively late practitioner of regionalism; a half decade really makes a difference in the crustification (whatever) of regionalism as a genre. She's important, conducive to the aims of feminist recovery that helped return scholarly interest to regionalism as a whole in the 1980s, and by all means good, but she's the tip of the iceberg.

[Chase · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Freeman's A New England Nun is a short story about a woman named Louisa who lives alone other than the companionship of her dog. She enjoys a nice, peaceful life that is very much predictable. All this changes when her fiancee, who has been out of the country making his fortune finally returns after 14 years. She finds that her life is about to turn upside down, and she tries to come to terms with what all must change in the coming months.

I very much enjoyed this short story. It was very descriptive and set the scene well. The characters were interesting, and i like the message that Louisa was perfectly content with herself rather than with a man.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I only read "A New England Nun" in an anthology for class... but I really enjoyed it. Many critics feel strongly against stories such as this, but, maybe it is because I am a woman, I love the details of an ordinary day, and I love hearing the internal thought life of a character. For me, Louisa's tale was an interesting one that captured my full attention the whole time, wondering what she'd do next. As a homebody myself (not to her extreme, though), I can relate to her fears. A pleasant read : )

[Bill S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A spinster who has waited 14 years for her fiancee to return from making his fortune is relieved to learn that he has fallen for another. She had grown accustomed to her life alone. They were both honor bound to keep their promise and neither wanted to disappoint the other. She releases him from his promise so he can pursue the other woman and she can live like an uncloistered nun. With the notable exception of the decision to reject marriage, this story screams old New England values. The author is considered an early feminist writer for creating independent female characters.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Only read "A New England Nun")
A very beautiful story of a woman leading a modest, quiet life confronted by indecision as her wedding day approaches. Should she risk her firmly established tranquil state of living by uprooting to live with a man to whom she's been engaged for nearly a decade?
Truly poignant, with a writing style that deviates from its otherwise dull, laborious contemporaries, to create something seemingly ahead of its time.

[Relyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't really read this whole book, just the title story and in another collection of short stories. Sill, the short story was so good that I had to write about it. WOW!!! A New England Nun was perfection in short story form. I am going to try to get ahold of this book so I can read more of Mary Freeman's work.

[Muir · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story delicately crushes stereotypes about women waiting for marriage and I am so here for it.

“Louisa, all alone by herself that night, wept a little, she hardly knew why; but the next morning, on waking, she felt like a queen who, after fearing lest her domain be wrested away from her, sees it firmly insured in her possession.”

[☼♎ Carmen the Bootyshaker Temptress ☼♎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this story. It was surprising that it ended the way it did because in the era women had their place and it was to be married and taking care of the home so when she didn't do that it surprised me.

[Amit · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do respect Louisa's choice. About what she'd done against that selfish, unfaithful sole. The name of her love - Joe. Well she should've stand her ground on that very night when heard that conversation between Joe and that women named Lily. Good enough for me to read anyway...

[Abbe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great bunch of stories written by a fascinating woman. Her stories intrigued me enough to research her life.

[Madhu]

Meticulously detailed. Vivid imagery and emotional lives of nineteenth century New England women.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a trippy story...definitely worth a read.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

see my review at ReadingWorld.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent!! A triumph!! Delightfully relatable, even after all these years since publication. My favorite of this 19th Century American Women Writers course so far.

[Deanna ✰ ☾ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed "A New England Nun" and all the sentiments behind it. I love reading about women who are happy in the world they have built for themselves.

[Faruk Dönmez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the fact that protagonist (Louisa Ellis) refuses when she is forced to change for someone else. In doing so, she discovers herself but may not understand what she is giving up in the process.

[Leena Arul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story. After I read the story, I looked up the author and found her life's story too! This story unsurprisingly reminds me of 'Little women' in that the main character Louisa reminds you of the March family girls who are adept at domestic work (bound to home and hearth) yet retained a fierce sense of independence within their cultural boundaries. I could sense Louisa's relief when she finally felt clear enough to call off her wedding. She could continue living her life; a life that is ascetic, but of her own design without having to give up her routines and order. She asserts her free will in giving up a man who has his heart elsewhere,  but with a palpable relief as if she finally finds her excuse for a safe exit. An exit that comes without remorse from a man that she had waited to get married  for a good 14 years. Empowerment even on a small scale feels good, it seems.