Women In Mary Wilkins Freeman's A New England Nun

Mary Wilkins Freeman’s “A New England Nun” is about a woman named Louisa Ellis. She battles with the obligations of marriage after waiting fourteen years for her fiancé, Joe, to come home from Australia. He is off making money to support her. Louisa spends all of her time doing boring and monotonous house work like polishing and sewing. During the time that Joe is away, Louisa had grows attached to her daily routine of tedious domestic activities. When Joe returns home, the routine she has come to love so much is interrupted. She has been engaged to Joe for so long, she isn’t really prepared for it to happen. “She had fallen into a way of placing it so far in the future that it was almost equal to placing it over the boundaries of another life” (Freeman 657). Ultimately, Louisa leaves her fiancé in order to live a solitary life with her obsessions. Joe’s affair with his mother’s caretaker, Lily, also fuels this decision. Similarly, Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” is about a woman named Edna Pontellier. She goes from a conventional, compliant
Although Louisa lives a domestic lifestyle that is expected of her, she does it because she wants to. It makes her happy. Her housework and solitude represent her independence. She didn’t mind waiting fourteen years on Joe to return because it was really just an excuse for her to be alone and live the life she truly longed for. Although Joe had an affair, she could have easily married someone else and pursued the expectation of “True Womanhood”, yet she chooses to live a solo life without depending on a man. Edna also acquires freedom within “True Womanhood”. Unlike Louisa, she completely rejects everything that society believes a woman should be. Some might even call her actions selfish. She breaks through the “true woman” role and uncovers her own identity outside of the status