A Discovered Pearl: unconventional romance

“Who was that?” he heard some one say. “I don't know,” said another.

Gilman Marlow walked on December 24, Christmas Eve, through the snow-covered streets of his home town, which he hadn't seen in 20 years, in "A Discovered Pearl" by Mary Eleanor Wilkins (later, Mrs. Freeman). The story, collected in the book A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891), is suspenseful, and just as awkward as the main male character (or, perhaps, other holiday homecomings after years away). It is unclear why Gilman has come back to his town after so long, now walking with a limp and wearing clothing which displays his poverty.

Trudging through the snow for five miles, he finally arrives at his family homestead, now boarded up and empty. He barely recognizes his next-door neighbor Lucy Glynn, who greets him with sadness. Gilman's father has died, she tells him, and invites him into her own house so she can retrieve the key to the Gilman home which she has kept.

Once inside her home with her elderly father, Lucy treats Gilman to tea and a warm fire. It is only then that Gilman realizes his fatigue and he is invited to spend the night rather than go back to his cold home next door. While preparing to sleep, he sees a picture he vaguely remembers; it was one he had given Lucy two decades before. Slowly, he recalls: "they had thought they were in love with each other, though little had been said about it."

The next day, Christmas morning, Gilman learns that Lucy has paid off his family's mortgage and annual property taxes by making money as a dress-maker. After settling legal matters on the estate, he comes back to his home to find Lucy already there, cooking a meal. He now thinks of her as a pearl, whose beauty had been growing all this time, with him unawares. Can their relationship be rekindled, even though he had forgotten her for so long?

It had stopped snowing, and there was a clear, yellow sky in the west. A flock of sparrows flew whistling around one of the maples. A sled loaded with Christmas greens was creaking down the road. One could hear children's voices in the distance. Lucy Glynn sped along. Whether wisely or not, she was full of all Christmas joy. She had given at last her Christmas gift, which she had been treasuring for twenty years.

Like many of Wilkins's stories, "A Discovered Pearl" highlights an old-fashioned, "any town" in New England. She often considers the passing of time and a haunting past, highlights unconventional romance stories, and offers a heavy focus on a main female character. The ending is somewhat ambiguous, too; if a marriage between Lucy and Gilman occurred, it is not depicted, nor explicitly stated.

Wilkins Freeman: serious and self-restrained

"These little stories were written about the village people of New England." So begins the preface to A Far-Away Melody and Other Stories, a new edition of the works of Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. The book, in fact, was a slimmer version of her previous collection A Humble Romance and Other Stories. In her preface, dated December 5, 1889, Freeman (or, more accurately, Wilkins, as she was not yet married) emphasized the old-fashioned nature of her New England tales. Those people, after all, are "the descendants of the Massachusetts Bay colonists, in whom can still be seen traces of those features of will and conscience, so strong as to be almost exaggerations and deformities, which characterised their ancestors."

Wilkins notes that writing down these stories were an effort to preserve them as the younger generations are less and less like their ancestors, whom she calls "serious and self-restrained." In addition to the title story, the collection published in Ireland included a Christmas story, "A Moral Exigency." In that tale, the main character is Eunice Fairweather, the 25-year old daughter of a poor minister. That connection left her with certain social obligations, particularly around the holidays, which she loyally followed despite occasional weariness and boredom of those tasks.

Eunice was not pretty but she was pious. She considered her appearance, her simple home, and her lot in life "with a sort of resigned disapproval." She did what was expected her as a minister's daughter but neither enjoyed it nor tried to avoid it. The same was, to some extent, true of a local clergyman, Mr. Wilson, who had previously been a romantic man before the death of his wife. Now a widower with a household of children, he sought out a practical solution: find a new wife to assist him. It was not for love that he asked the minister for the hand of Eunice Fairweather. When her father tells her this, she acknowledges that he would make a fine husband but admits, "I think I would rather remain as I am, father."

Eunice asks for a week to consider the offer. In the days that followed, something quite unexpected happens: the wealthy, good-looking Burr Mason seems smitten by Eunice, despite his engagement to the lovely Ada Harris. Burr speaks of marriage to her, and Ada falls into a fit of jealousy and rage:

There is no excuse for you: you knew it. It is no better for him. You have encouraged him in being false. You have dragged him down. You are a plainer girl than I, and a soberer one, but you are no better. You will not make him a better wife. You cannot make him a good wife after this. It is all for yourself — yourself!"

Throughout the story, Eunice seems to drift through her own life, ambivalent of the course she is following (as Leah Blatt Glasner notes, "a mixture of fiery rebel and dutiful slave"). In the end, she gives up her connection to Burr Mason, leaving him for Ada. The ambiguous ending of the story leaves the reader asking, however, does Eunice return to Mr. Wilson? Or does she choose the spinster life? And is either an improvement on the other?

Two Old Lovers: Maria and David's courting

Mary Eleanor Wilkins (later Mrs. Freeman) turned to writing as a source of income. In her teen years, she had written a few works for children but her first major success came when, on March 31, 1883, Harper's Bazaar printed her first mature short story, "Two Old Lovers."

"Two Old Lovers" takes place in a suburban neighborhood with very little variation among homes and gardens. The town, Leyden, is dominated by shoe factories and its people are cheerful, prosperous, and easy-going. Martha and Maria Brewster are mother and daughter (father having died 15 years earlier), aged 80 and 60, respectively. A slow-moving neighbor named David Emmons, two years older than Maria, is seen visiting the household every week with an offering of his homegrown vegetables. Maria, in return, offered him her baking skills on Saturdays. Though the townspeople talked of the presumed marriage between David and Maria, no arrangement was made between the two.They had been courting this way for 25 years:

There was something laughable, and at the same time rather pathetic, about Maria and David's courting. All the outward appurtenances of '' keeping company" were as rigidly observed as they had been twenty-five years ago, when David Emmons first cast his mild blue eyes shyly and lovingly on red-cheeked, quick-spoken Maria Brewster. Every Sunday evening, in the winter, there was a fire kindled in the parlour, the parlour lamp was lit at dusk all the year round, and Maria's mother retired early, that the young people might "sit up." The "sitting up" was no very formidable affair now, whatever it might have been in the first stages of the courtship. The need of sleep overbalanced sentiment in those old lovers, and by ten o'clock at the latest Maria's lamp was out, and David had wended his solitary way to his own home.

The more later revealed that David had never proposed but they assumed it would come eventually. Maria did not concern herself about his timing. "There was never at any time much of the sentimental element in her composition," according to the story, "and her feeling for David was eminently practical in its nature." Still, she was happy at the prospect and even bought herself fine silk to wear on what she presumed would be the inevitable wedding day. She soon gives away her beautiful silk. When David is on his deathbed, however, he calls her to his side...

The same year "Two Old Lovers" was published, Freeman moved from Brattleboro, Vermont to her home town Randolph, Massachusetts. There, she moved in with a friend named Mary John Wales. The two women remained close companions for years, living together for nearly twenty years before Wilkins married Dr. Charles Freeman. The marriage proved disastrous.

Death of Mary Wilkins Freeman

At her death at age 77 on March 13, 1930, Mary Wilkins Freeman left behind 13 novels, six volumes of children's stories, two books of poetry, a play, and over 200 short stories. Born in Massachusetts on Halloween in 1852, she became known for her snapshots of New England life, with a special emphasis on ordinary small towns and poor rural women. She herself had reason to be interested in those topics. By 1883, her father, her mother, and her younger sister had died while the family was living in Vermont. Homeless and poverty-stricken, she turned to writing as a means of financial support and produced one story after another in rapid succession.

Her problems, however, did not end there. When she was approaching 50 years old in 1902, she married Charles Freeman and the couple moved to New Jersey. Several years later, she institutionalized her husband for his mental problems and alcoholism. She obtained a legal separation from him before his death. In her last few years, fame and success finally came to her; she and Edith Wharton were the first women officially elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters (Hamlin Garland presented her with a medal of distinction on behalf of that organization in 1926).

Freeman's story "A Far-Away Melody" (1887) features two homely twin sisters in their 50s named Mary and Priscilla. As they hang clothes up to dry, it is a beautiful day, where the season transitions towards spring and the trees are beginning to show their green leaves — a peaceful day to die, Priscilla observes. Later, at dinner, she hears the sound of music, like the closing chimes of a bell, though Mary does not and scolds her for imagining the sound. That night, Priscilla dies in her sleep and Mary decides to listen for her music too:

She lived so for nearly a year after her sister died. It was evident that she failed gradually and surely, though there was no apparent disease. It seemed to trouble her exceedingly that she never heard the music she listened for. She had an idea that she could not die unless she did, and her whole soul seemed filled with longing to join her beloved twin sister, and be assured of her forgiveness. This sister-love was all she had ever felt, besides her love of God, in any strong degree... At last she died, in the spring, a week or two before her sister had the preceding year. The season was a little more advanced this year, and the apple-trees were blossomed out further than they were then. She died about ten o'clock in the morning. The day before, her niece had been called into the room by a shrill cry of rapture from her: “I've heard it! I've heard it!” she cried. “A faint sound o' music, like the dyin' away of a bell.”

Everything you have heard, seen, or done

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.

Thus wrote Mary Wilkins Freeman on December 10, 1889 to her friend and fellow writer Sarah Orne Jewett. In the preceding decade, the Halloween-born Freeman had become a prolific author – the beginning of her long career. Both Freeman and Jewett were soon to publish their most famous works: A New England Nun And Other Stories (1892) and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), respectively.

Freeman was 37 years old when she wrote her letter to Jewett and, by then, had published over 50 short stories in about six years. It is unclear if any of them were as autobiographical as her quote suggests. Certainly, her work reflected her life in New England and following the traditions of that region. Inspired by the new realism literary movement, her writing paints pictures of ordinary people: editor Horace Scudder complimented her "truthfulness," and another critic praised her ability to show the "pathos and beauty of simple lives."

Years later in 1921, she wrote a short autobiographical essay about her first published work, "A Shadow Family." After winning a $50 prize with it, she indulged herself by buying new clothes (ashamedly admitting she only gave away one-tenth of it):

However, I give myself the tardy credit of being perfectly conscious, whether or not I have succeeded, in caring more in my heart for the art of my work than for anything else.

Freeman: They say the house is haunted

Born in Randolph, Massachusetts on October 31, 1852, Mary E. Wilkins later married Dr. Charles Freeman (they soon separated). As a girl, she began writing to support her family, ultimately publishing over 20 novels and short story collections. Perhaps it is appropriate that a woman born on Halloween wrote several ghost stories. One such story, published before her marriage, was "A Gentle Ghost" (1889).

In the tale, four women are traversing a cemetery in the spring. Just when they are ready to turn back, they discover a small child all by herself at one of the plots. She tells them her name is Nancy Wren and that she is ten years old.

"It's nobody I know," remarked the questioner, reflectively. "I guess she comes from — over there. She made a significant motion of her head towards the right. "Where do you live, Nancy?" she asked.
The child also motioned towards the right.

To the right of the cemetery is the almshouse. The girl points out several plots and claims this is where her family is buried. One of the women is dubious. "It's the Blake lot!" said she. "This child can't be any relation to 'em." But Nancy claims she used to play with Jane Blake.

"She died forty year ago this May," said she, with a gasp. "I used to know her when I was a child. She was ten years old when she died. You ain't ever seen her. You hadn't ought to tell such stories."

The women, shocked and unnerved by the child, leave her and make their way towards the exit of the cemetery. On the way out, they notice the home across the street, the home of the Dunn family.

"Say," said she, in a mysterious whisper, "I want to know if you've heard the stories 'bout the Dunn house? ...I heard it pretty straight — they say the house is haunted."

The haunted house of the Dunn family soon has a connection to the almshouse next door — and little Nancy Wren and even the deceased Jane Blake...