suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb, ” why the silence “ when the great world
for the fi rst time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird ’ s sake? ”
(204). Her reply comes in the form of a plea to the natural world to “ bring your
gifts and graces and tell your secrets to this lonely country child ” (205). In so doing,
as Fetterley and Pryse explain, Jewett “ re - articulates the ‘ mothering ’ Sylvia derives
Landscape as Haven
401
from the landscape and constructs regionalist fi ction as itself a form of mothering
absent in the responses of those who would see in Sylvia only a fear of growing
up ” (205).
In a letter to Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, another New England
regionalist, wrote: “ I suppose it seems to you as it does to me that everything you
have heard, seen, or done, since you opened your eyes on the world, is coming back
to you sooner or later, to go into stories. ” 13 Drawing from what she had heard, seen,
or done, Freeman broke new ground through the creation of heroines who continually
extended the challenge to readers posed by “ A White Heron, ” with grown heroines
who confront and overturn gender and class boundaries. With her focus on the small
New England villages that she knew best, Randolph, Massachusetts, and Brattleboro,
Vermont, she found the freedom to step beyond the narrow expectations of her editors
without seeming to do so, to explore the connection between feminine identity and
place, and to subvert the domestic realm as an arena for female rebellion. Mary E.
Wilkins Freeman (1852 –
1930) is best known for the short stories she published
beginning in 1883 in Harper ’ s Bazaar , some of the fi nest of which were collected in
A New England Nun and Other Stories. By the time this collection was published in
1891, Freeman had received considerable recognition as a short - story writer. Early
literary histories frequently marginalized Freeman as a “ local colorist, ” a “ minor ”
writer who depicted the peculiarities of her region. Yet like James, she was interested
in inner as well as outer landscape, and like Twain, she experimented with dialect
and humor while probing the larger questions about the nature of the human race.
She shifted her readers ’ attention to the relatively invisible realms of domesticity
where large battles were fought on humble turf. Although she did marry eventually,
Freeman did so after the childbearing years, and the marriage dissipated. Her best
writing was linked to her sense of autonomy when unmarried and living in Randolph,
Massachusetts, where she sustained a twenty - year friendship with her companion,
Mary Wales.
With her focus almost entirely on women
’
s struggles and concerns, Freeman
’
s
depictions of region explore the psychology of women ’ s confl icts as she knew them.
Her work clearly builds from the foundation of regionalism established by Jewett,
and she had great admiration for Jewett ’ s work. Although the focus on nature and
landscape was less pronounced in Freeman ’ s work, Freeman ’ s favorite Jewett story was
“
A White Heron.
”
In
“
Christmas Jenny,
”
Freeman comes closest to Thaxter and
Jewett in depicting the relationship between her central female character and her
natural surroundings. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman ’ s “ Christmas Jenny ” offers an analysis
of the connection between self - preservation and preservation of nature. The language
of landscape in this story, as in “ A White Heron ” and “ Spray Sprite, ” is not an adorn-
ment but a vehicle to reveal character.
In “ Christmas Jenny, ” Jenny Wrayne defi nes herself against rather than within the
context of male values. It is as though Christmas Jenny is the woman Sylvia could
become, having come to terms with the loss of the “ dream of love ” embodied in the
hunter ( “ Christmas Jenny ” 164). As Josephine Donovan explains, much of Jenny ’ s
402
Leah B. Glasser
self - fulfi llment stems from her protection and care of wild animals which have been
injured by the traps men set, the “ mechanized masculine operations that destroy that
natural life with which … women identify ” (Donovan 132). Jenny is a self - suffi cient,
aging spinster who owns a home and a few acres of land on a mountaintop overlook-
ing the village. Like Sylvia atop the pine tree, Jenny is set apart, and set above the
community beyond her perch. When rumors spread in the village that Jenny is “ love -
cracked, ” having been in love with a man who married someone else, her only close
friend replies: ‘ I know one thin ’ – if she did git kind of twisted out of the reg ’ lar road
of lovin ’ , she ’ s in another one, that ’ s full of little dumbies an ’ starvin ’ chippies an ’
lame rabbits, an ’ she ain ’ t love - cracked no more ’ n other folks ” ( “ Christmas Jenny ”
171). Redefi ning love then, in matriarchal terms, Jenny chooses an alternative to the
“ reg ’ lar road of lovin ’ ” by loving creatures of nature instead of a husband.
Freeman
’
s physical description of Jenny is a celebration of her unity with the
natural environment: “ She made one think of those sylvan faces with features com-
posed of bark - wrinkles and knot - holes that one can fancy out of the trunks of trees.
She was not an aged woman, but her hair was iron - gray, and crinkled as closely as
gray moss ” (164). The source of Jenny ’ s autonomy, in fact, is nature itself. Jenny
comes down from her mountain abode to sell evergreen trees and wreaths in the winter
and vegetables in the summer.
The woman looked oddly at a distance like a broad green moving bush; she was drag-
ging something green after her, too. When she came nearer one could see long sprays
of ground - pine were wound around her shoulders, she carried a basket trailing with
them, and holding also many little bouquets of bright - colored everlasting fl owers. She
dragged a sled, with a small hemlock - tree bound upon it. She came long sturdily over
the slippery road. (163)
With this fi rst image of Jenny, Freeman conveys womanly strength all bound up in
Jenny ’ s link to nature, with “ ground - pine … wound around her shoulders, ” and the
ability to walk “ sturdily ” on the icy road that most are unable to travel.
Freeman analyzes through Jenny, as Barbara Johns has noted, “ the notion of the
spinster as mystic, a person so misunderstood by her society that she is considered
strange, yet so united with the universe that she is capable of profoundly infl uencing
two of society ’ s most unyielding institutions, marriage and the church. ” In this sense,
Johns continues, Freeman ’ s depiction of Jenny ’ s choice goes beyond the pitied Joanna
of Jewett ’ s Country of the Pointed Firs . Jenny ’ s infl uence on the married couple down
the road is fascinating. The Careys “ represent a nineteenth - century marriage in which
the woman has internalized all the features of the ‘ cult of true womanhood
’ ” (Johns
11). Jenny helps Mrs. Carey transform her domesticity into a form of power, and her
husband ’ s tantrums subside once Jenny teaches Mrs. Carey the use of strategy. Ignor-
ing Mr. Carey ’ s imperiousness, Jenny has Mrs. Carey enjoy the feasts she prepares
without beckoning her whining husband to the table to participate. Jenny ’ s “ sensitiv-
ity, power, and self - suffi ciency ” transfer to Betsey Carey, the married friend, and in
Landscape as Haven
403
this way Freeman shows that “ women united can go on to resist whatever institution
attempts to keep them in their place ” (11).
Freeman ’ s analysis of the effect of the eccentric Jenny on her community is superb.
Blind to the meaning or beauty of Jenny ’ s world, the villagers alert the minister and
Deacon Little to the rumor that Jenny mistreats the animals she has caged in her
home and a deaf boy who lives with her. More than any other story Freeman wrote,
this story captures the injustice of the stigma of spinsterhood and the possibility of
surmounting it.
When the minister and Deacon Little come to Jenny ’ s home, their visits are an
invasion of what Freeman calls “ sacred space. ” The story envisions a female ideal, an
alternative life, for the single woman in harmony both with nature and society.
Arriving at Jenny ’ s “ curious sylvan ” abode, the men immediately upset the images
of nature surrounding Jenny. “ They started up a fl ock of sparrows that were feeding
by Jenny ’ s door; but the birds did not fl y very far – they settled into a tree and
watched ” (169). It is as though these creatures are connected to Jenny and are there
to protect her from this intrusion. When the men enter her home, they “ could not
see anything at fi rst. ” Their inability to see has many levels. They are blinded by the
contrast of moving from the
“
brilliant light outside
”
to the darkness of Jenny
’
s
“ weather - beaten hut, ” and they are equally unable to see the principles her home
represents. When their eyes fall upon the deaf boy who “ looked up in their faces with
an expression of delicate wonder and amusement, ” they notice without comprehension
that “ he is dressed like a girl, in a long blue gingham pinafore, ” and sits “ in the midst
of a heap of evergreens, which he had been twining into wreaths; his pretty, soft, fair,
hair was damp, and lay in a very fl at and smooth scallop over his full white forehead ”
(169 – 70). Noting that he looks “ well cared for, ” they still cannot, as Johns clarifi es,
accept that Jenny has created a boy who defi es gender stereotypes as essentially an
embodiment of Jenny ’ s values. They are “ unable to see the boy as a sign of the unity
that makes Jenny, the forest, the house, and the boy inseparable, indivisible. ” The
boy ’ s “ ‘ wild and inarticulate ’ cry, united with the cries of the caged creatures, a ‘ like
a soft clamor of eloquent appeal to the two visitors. ’ But it is futile. The men cannot
understand what they see and simply stand ‘ solemn and perplexed ’ ” (Johns 11 – 12).
Perhaps what is most disturbing to these men is Jenny ’ s satisfaction in her spinster-
hood, the fact that she has defi ned new connections, new possibilities of self - fulfi ll-
ment through her tie with nature, with a boy who is also a girl and thereby defi es
gender assumptions, with a married woman down the road, and through the economic
independence she has won by selling her goods. This elderly woman living alone cares
for others rather than requiring that others care for her, and her home, strange as it
seems to the men, is a home that represents her strength rather than her weakness.
Betsey Carey gives voice to the story which the men are so incapable of interpret-
ing, becoming, in essence, Jenny ’ s tongue: She tells the men, “ I ain ’ t goin ’ to have
you comin ’ up here to spy on Jenny, an ’ nobody to home that ’ s got any tongue to
speak for her ” (171). Betsey is the translator. Standing before them “ like a ruffl ed and
defi ant bird that was frighting them as well as herself with her temerity, ” she sums
404
Leah B. Glasser
up the beauty of Jenny: “ I dunno but what bein ’ a missionary to robins an ’ starvin ’
chippies an ’ little deaf - an - dumb children is jest as good as some other kinds, an ’ that ’ s
what she is ” (172). Freeman ’ s reference to a “ witch - hunt ” in this story is signifi cant.
“ It was a witch - hunt that went up the mountain road that December afternoon ” (174).
Determined to dispel the myths that yield “ witch - hunts ” and render self - suffi cient
single women the equivalent of witches because they have not conformed, Freeman
celebrates Jenny ’ s world through the voice of the conventional and once - passive Mrs.
Carey. Together, Jenny and Betsey Carey overthrow the judgments of the church, the
community, and the world in which marriage is the only acceptable path for women.
The deacon and minister
“
retreat
”
quickly and apologetically, with praise for
Jenny ’ s generous spirit. They send her a turkey for Christmas, the turkey that Betsey
and Jenny eat together at the end of the story. In Johns ’ s words, the two women have
“ transcended together the pettiness and the narrowness of a church which sits in
judgment of women, which twists charity into abnormality or perversity; and they
have transcended a culture which prescribes that there is only one ‘ reg ’ lar road of
lovin ’ ” (Johns 11 – 12). The meal the women share at the end is a bonding of kindred
spirits, and the unmarried woman ’ s life has played a crucial role in that of the married
woman. Together they have confronted male institutions and transcended the witch -
hunt. In this way Freeman offers a subversive vision of women in nineteenth - century
New England. 14 Her vehicle is clearly the creation of a colossal fi gure through Jenny,
a mythic matriarchal power capable of radically reversing the power structure itself.
The maternal values so evident in Jenny
’
s approach to the animals, the boy, the
married couple, the entire community in fact, are invested with uncanny power.
In “ The Great Goddess in New England: Mary Wilkins Freeman ’ s Sister Jenny, ”
Sarah Sherman argues convincingly that Christmas Jenny is “ a Virgin Mary radically
redefi ned ” (Sherman 160, 161). Having never married or given birth, the spinster is
here redefi ned, able to enjoy the pleasures of motherhood without the burdens of
domestic entrapment and subjugation; furthermore, this new concept of maternity
reverses the concept of deprivation. We do not see a spinster who is hungry for love
and motherhood, longing for the world beyond the pine tree, the sea, the forest. It is
Mrs. Carey ’ s husband who is hungry for more than a Christmas dinner at the end of
the story. He comes to the table with “ sober dignity, ” and Freeman has him smile at
the boy whom Jenny has taken into her home, the feminized male child. “ Christmas
Jenny ” brings the themes of �
� The Spray Sprite ” and “ A White Heron ” to a realm in
which it is possible to maintain both autonomy and refuge within a woman ’ s chosen
landscape and yet simultaneously to partake in and infl uence the conjugal dinner.
Fetterley and Pryse offer an interesting analysis of this story in their chapter on
“ regionalism as ‘ queer ’ theory ” in Writing Out of Place. Jenny ’ s “ queerness ” inspires
horror for the villagers initially. The power of the story, according to Fetterley and
Pryse, is “ the portrait of Jenny herself and the capacity of her queerness to disempower
the deacon and the minister ” (331). Ultimately Freeman managed in this story to
change the way readers view queer or normal. Finally, it is Jenny ’ s values that sustain
the community and heal the wounds of her married neighbors. “ Freeman leaves her
Landscape as Haven
405
readers with the conviction that the only standard worth embracing is that represented
by the wild but utterly sane and compassionate Jenny, and that the story ’ s wisdom
is not to be found in the deacons but in the mountain woman who ‘ made one think
of those sylvan faces with features composed of bark - wrinkles and knot - holes that one
can fancy looking out of the trunks of trees ’ ” (204).
By positing a unity of person and place, of woman and nature, Freeman, Jewett,
and Thaxter created a different context within which to view and understand women ’ s
lives. Rewriting their landscapes in their own terms, they ask their readers to value
their characters ’ self - possession through their relationships to nature and place above
their potential relationships with men. Their short stories thus became a means to
redefi ne the lives of nineteenth - century women, granting them the capacity for power
and voice. In each case, the female voice emerges through the depiction of place as
much as, if not more than, character. We know the sprite ’ s voice through the cry of
the sandpipers or the “ singing sparkling brine, ” Sylvia ’ s through the “ murmur of the
pine ’ s green branches, ” and Jenny ’ s through the “ soft clamor ” of the creatures in her
weather - beaten hill - top hut. Perhaps it is their capacity to shift landscape and setting
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 87