A Companion to the American Short Story

by Alfred Bendixen

  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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