Freeman began writing stories and verse 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.”[7] 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 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 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.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10]
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.[11][12]
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, 1900.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).[5]
