英美短篇小说欣赏anewEngland课件nun

In other stories, however, she explored the rebellions and triumphs of seemingly meek women, depicting their strategies for gaining and maintaining control over their domestic situations with humor and sensitivity. She provided unflinching portraits of both the difficulties of "spinsterhood" and the often oppressive power dynamics that structured nineteenth-century marriage.
The secondary characters are Joe Dagget, Lily Dyer, Joe's mother and the community. They all are classified as flat characters, constructed by a dominant trait.
While Freeman's successful career afforded her financial security and a great deal of autonomy, her best fiction focuses on the plight of women whose lives are bounded by poverty and the social constraints imposed on them by their strict religious beliefs and their position as women. Fascinated by the impact of traditional Puritan values of submissiveness, frugality, and self-denial on New England culture, Freeman often portrayed characters who create obstacles to their own happiness by their strict adherence to Calvinist morality.
A New England Nun
Historical Context
Religion and Economics Mary Wilkins Freeman wrote most of her best-
known short stories in the 1880s and 1890s. They provide a unique snapshot of a particular time and place in American history. The small towns of post- Civil War New England were often desolate places. The war itself, combined with urbanization, industrialization, and westward expansion, had taken most of the young ablBaidu Nhomakorabea-bodied men out of the region.
The remaining population was largely female and elderly. Women like Louisa Ellis, who waited many years for husbands, brothers, fathers and boyfriends to return from the West or other places they had gone to seek jobs, were not uncommon. The area was suffering from economic depression and many were forced to leave to support themselves and their families. There were many widows from the war, too, often living hand-tomouth and trying to keep up appearances.
Primary Works
A Humble Romance and Other Stories. 1887. A New England Nun and Other Stories. 1891. Pembroke. 1894. Silence, and Other Stories. 1898. The Revolt of Mother and Other Stories. 1974.
Plot
A New England Nun" is a story about the heroine who learned to live a solitary life, despite her engagement of fifteen years to a fortune hunter. Freeman begins the novel with Louisa Ellis sewing in her sitting room. The lateness of the afternoon causes her to perform chores throughout the house. She is meticulous as she prepares her tea, cooks a meal, feeds the dog, and tidies the house. She is preparing for Joe's return. Joe Dagget is her fiancé of fifteen years, fourteen of which he has spent seeking fortune.
As she waits, she thinks about the solitary ways she has adopted during the years spent with Joe. Freeman introduces two characters who don't really know each other. Every time they come together, the meeting is awkward and forced. Joe's presence interrupts Louisa's peaceful solitude. He brings imbalance. By the end of the story, Louisa discovers that Joe is in love with someone else and she calls off the engagement. Although she weeps at the loss, she is grateful to the idea that she doesn't have to give up her personal domain to a marriage with Joe.
Achievements
In 1926 she was awarded the William Dean Howells Gold Medal for Fiction by the American Academy of Letters, and later that year she was inducted into the prestigious National Institute for Arts and Letters. She died in Metuchen and was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)
She was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, from 1870–1871. 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 passed the greater part of her life in Massachusetts and Vermont. Freeman herself married late in life, wedding Dr. Charles Freeman when she was fortynine. After an initial period of harmony, the marriage ended in separation when she had her husband institutionalized for alcoholism.
The feature of her works
Narrated in a firm and objective manner with occasional subtle undertones of humor and irony, Freeman’s stories were deft character studies of somehow exceptional people who, trapped by poverty or other handicaps in sterile, restrictive circumstances, react in various ways against their situations. Her use of New England village and countryside settings and dialects placed her stories in the local color movement, and her work thereby enjoyed an added vogue; nevertheless, she avoided the sentimentality then current in popular literature.
Characters
The main character in the story is Louisa Ellis. The plot focuses on her desire for remaining alone and maintaining her lifestyle. This character is classified as a round one, more individualized and belonging to the everyday world. Louisa can be defined as an independent and organized woman.