Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (October 31, 1852 – March 13, 1930) was an American author.

Biography

Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts on October 31, 1852, to Eleanor Lothrop and Warren Edward Wilkins, who originally baptized her "Mary Ella". Freeman's parents were orthodox

Congregationalists Congregational churches (also Congregationalist churches or Congregationalism) are Protestant churches in the Calvinist tradition practising congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its ...

, bestowing a very strict childhood. Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works. In 1867, the family moved to Brattleboro, Vermont, where Freeman graduated from the local high school before attending

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. ...

(then, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in

South Hadley, Massachusetts South Hadley (, ) is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 18,150 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. South Hadley is home to Mount Holyoke Colleg ...

, for one year, from 1870 to 1871. She later finished her education at Glenwood Seminary in West Brattleboro.Fishinger, Sondra. "Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 1852–1930", in ''Past and Promise: Lives of New Jersey Women''. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997: 140. When the family's dry goods business in Vermont failed in 1873, the family returned to Randolph, Massachusetts. Freeman's mother died three years later, and she changed her middle name to "Eleanor" in her memory. Freeman's father died suddenly in 1883, leaving her without any immediate family and an estate worth only $973. Wilkins returned to her hometown of Randolph. She moved in with a friend, Mary J. Wales, and began writing as her only source of income.Fishinger, Sondra. "Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 1852–1930", in ''Past and Promise: Lives of New Jersey Women''. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997: 141. During a visit to Metuchen, New Jersey in 1892, she met Dr. Charles Manning Freeman, a non-practicing medical doctor seven years younger than she. After years of courtship and delays, the two were married on January 1, 1902. Immediately after, she firmly established her name as "Mary E. Wilkins Freeman", which she asked '' Harper's'' to use on all of her work. The couple built a home in Metuchen, where Freeman became a local celebrity for her writing, despite having occasionally published satirical fictional representations of her neighbors. Her husband suffered from

alcoholism Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomina ...

and an addiction to sleeping powders. He also had a reputation for driving fast horses and womanizing. He was committed to the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane in Trenton, and the two legally separated a year later. After his death in 1923, he left the majority of his wealth to his chauffeur and only one dollar to his former wife. 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. Freeman suffered a heart attack and died in Metuchen on March 15, 1930, aged 77. She was laid to rest in Hillside Cemetery in

Scotch Plains, New Jersey Scotch Plains is a township in Union County, New Jersey, United States. The township is located on a ridge in northern- central New Jersey, within the Raritan Valley and Rahway Valley regions in the New York metropolitan area. As of the 201 ...

Adolescence

As an adolescent, Freeman was increasingly caught between the need for her mother's love and her instinct to avoid becoming her mother and subsiding into her mother's form of passivity. Despite continuous pressure from her mother to participate in domestic chores, no amount of discipline could pull Mary away from her reading to the reality of hated kitchen work. According to Edward Foster's biography of Freeman, "Disliking her household duties, she avoided them, nor could she be moved by disciplinary tactics." It is clear that a growing tension between Mary and her mother centered on her resistance to undertaking the tasks expected of a "good girl." As the years passed, the contrast between Mary and her sister, Anna, became apparent. While her sister Anna willingly undertook domestic work and increasingly met her parents' expectations, Mary quietly began to reject them. She would resist her mother's world of domesticity throughout her entire life. Her story, "The Revolt of Mother" is especially significant in this context, for the story seems to have been written as a tribute to her mother's work, a form of work she had never valued in her mother's lifetime.

Writing

Freeman began writing stories and

verse Verse may refer to: Poetry * Verse, an occasional synonym for poetry * Verse, a metrical structure, a stanza * Blank verse, a type of poetry having regular meter but no rhyme * Free verse, a type of poetry written without the use of strict me ...

for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Her career as a short story writer launched in 1881 when she took first place in a short story contest with her submission “The Ghost Family.” When the supernatural caught her interest, the result was a group of short stories which combined domestic realism with supernaturalism and these have proved very influential. 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 "A New England Nun" is a short story by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman published in 1891. Plot summary "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 ho ...

and Other Stories'' (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life. Freeman is also remembered for her novel '' Pembroke'' (1894), and she contributed a notable chapter to the

collaborative novel Collaborative fiction is a form of writing by a group of authors who share creative control of a story. Collaborative fiction can occur for commercial gain, as part of education, or recreationally – many collaboratively written works have be ...

entitled '' The Whole Family'' (1908). Through her different genres of work including children's stories, poems, and short stories, Mary Wilkins Freeman sought to demonstrate her values as a feminist. During the time which she was writing, she did this in nonconventional ways; for example, she diverged from making her female characters weak and in need of help which was a common trope in literature. Through characters such as Louisa in her short story: “A New England Nun,” Freeman challenges contemporary ideas concerning female roles, values, and relationships in society. Also, Freeman's short story “The Revolt of 'Mother'" illustrated the struggles of rural women and the role they played within their families. “The Revolt of 'Mother'” initiated the discussion on the rights of rural woman, went on to inspire many more pieces discussing the lack of control rural woman had over families finances, and looking to improve the structure of farm families in the early twentieth-century. The one-act opera ''The Village Singer'' by Stephen Paulus was adapted from a Freeman short story; it was commissioned by Opera Theater of Saint Louis, and was premiered in 1979. Although she produced a dozen volumes of short stories and as many novels, Freeman is remembered chiefly for the first two collections of stories, ''A Humble Romance and Other Stories'' (1887) and ''A New England Nun and Other Stories'' (1891), and the novel ''Pembroke'' (1894) (Britannica Encyclopedia).

Bibliography

* ''Decorative Plaques'' (1883) * ''The Adventures of Ann'' (1886) * ''A Humble Romance and Other Stories'' (1887) * ''

and Other Stories'' (1891) * ''The Revolt of Mother'' (1891) * '' Young Lucretia and Other Stories'' (1892) * '' The Pot of Gold and Other Stories'' (1892) * ''Jane Field'' (1892) * ''Giles Corey'' (1893) * '' Pembroke'' (1894) * ''Comfort Pease and Her Gold Ring'' (1895) * ''Madelon'' (1896) * ''Once Upon A Time'' (1897) * ''Jerome, a Poor Man'' (1897) * ''Silence, and other Stories'' (1898) Mary E Wilkins Freeman

* ''People of Our Neighborhood'' (1898) * ''Some of Our Neighbours'' (1898) * ''In Colonial Times'' (1899) * ''

The Jamesons ''The Jamesons'' is a novel by American writer Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins, first published in 1899. It is narrated in the First-person narrative, first person by a character named Sophia. The story she tells began six years befo ...

'' (1899) * ''Evelina's Garden'' (1899) * ''The Love of Parson Lord and Other Stories'' (1900) * ''The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century'' (1900) * ''Understudies'' (1901) * ''The Portion of Labor'' (1901) * ''A Far-Away Melody and Other Stories'' (1902) * ''Six Trees'' (1903) * ''The Wind in the Rose Bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural'' (1903) * ''The Givers and Other Stories'' (1904) * ''The Debtor'' (1905) * ''Doc Gordon'' (1906) * ''The Fair Lavinia, and Others'' (1907) * ''By the Light of the Soul'' (1907) * ''The Shoulders of Atlas'' (1908) * ''The Winning Lady, and Others'' (1909) * ''The Green Door'' (1910)] * ''The Butterfly House'' (1912) * ''The Yates Pride'' (1912) * ''The Copy–Cat, and Other Stories'' (1914) * ''An Alabaster Box'' (1917) * ''Edgewater People'' (1918) * ''The Best Stories of Mary E. Wilkins'' (1927) *'' Collected Ghost Stories'' (1974)

References

Bibliography

* Glasser, Leah Blatt. ''In a Closet Hidden: The Life and Work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman''. Amherst: University of Mass. Press, 1996

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External links

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Works
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Open Library

* ttp://college.hmco.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/late_nineteenth/freeman_ma.html Biography
A New England Nun-Free Short Story

The Revolt of Mother-Free Short Story

The Uncollected Short Stories of Mary Wilkins Freeman

Dissent and Affirmation by Thomas Maik (Analysis)

Character Types in the Fiction of Mary Wilkins Freeman

Artist and Audience in Three Mary Wilkins Freeman Stories

Finding aid to Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman letters at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins 1852 births 1930 deaths 19th-century American novelists 20th-century American novelists American children's writers American fantasy writers American women short story writers American women novelists Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Mount Holyoke College alumni People from Metuchen, New Jersey People from Randolph, Massachusetts Novelists from Massachusetts Novelists from New Jersey Burials in New Jersey American women children's writers Women science fiction and fantasy writers 20th-century American women writers 19th-century American women writers Burials at Hillside Cemetery (Scotch Plains, New Jersey) 19th-century American short story writers 20th-century American short story writers

Biography

Adolescence

Writing

Bibliography

See also

References

Bibliography

External links