A triumph of 'genius and audacity'

An American story about a clever and resourceful woman who improves her family's living arrangements

Apr 25, 2025

The story so far…

Sarah Penn, a farmer's wife, grows tired of waiting for her husband to build the new home he’s been promising for decades. When she learns he’s building yet another barn instead, she waits patiently until he goes off for a weekend to buy a new horse, and then takes matters into her own hands, with the help of her children...

Nanny and Sammy stared at each other. There was something strange in their mother’s manner. Mrs Penn did not eat anything herself. She went into the pantry, and they heard her moving dishes while they ate. Presently she came out with a pile of plates. She got the clothes-basket out of the shed, and packed them in it. Nanny and Sammy watched. She brought out cups and saucers, and put them in with the plates.

“What you goin’ to do, mother?” inquired Nanny, in a timid voice. A sense of something unusual made her tremble, as if it were a ghost. Sammy rolled his eyes over his pie.

“You’ll see what I’m goin’ to do,” replied Mrs. Penn. “If you’re through, Nanny, I want you to go up-stairs an’ pack up your things; an’ I want you, Sammy, to help me take down the bed in the bedroom.”

“Oh, mother, what for?” gasped Nanny.

“You’ll see.”

During the next few hours a feat was performed by this simple, pious New England mother which was equal in its way to Wolfe’s storming of the heights of Abraham. It took no more genius and audacity of bravery for Wolfe to cheer his wondering soldiers up those steep precipices, under the sleeping eyes of the enemy, than for Sarah Penn, at the head of her children, to move all their little household goods into the new barn while her husband was away.

Nanny and Sammy followed their mother’s instructions without a murmur; indeed, they were overawed. There is a certain uncanny and superhuman quality about all such purely original undertakings as their mother’s was to them. Nanny went back and forth with her light loads, and Sammy tugged with sober energy.

At five o’clock in the afternoon the little house in which the Penns had lived for forty years had emptied itself into the new barn.

Winslow Homer, *The Return of the Gleaner* (1867), public domain

What we love about this passage...

We love the woman’s resolve, and the way she methodically and efficiently sets about moving her entire household into the barn, enlisting her children as footsoldiers (by way of a reference to General James Wolfe’s successful battle at the Plains of Abraham in Quebec in 1759 where he defeated the French and secured victory for the British).

Her children’s awe of her ‘superhuman quality’ is a key part of the story; the implication seems to be that this is how change happens across generations, by individuals disrupting habits of mind through direct action. From the outside, the woman remains a housewife and mother, but her role within the family is transformed by her quiet, assertive agency.

About the author

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) was an American writer whose short story collections enjoyed widespread popularity, particularly A Humble Romance (1887) and A New England Nun (1891). ‘The Revolt of “Mother”’ was often hailed as a model short story and was assigned reading in high school English classes in the United States in the early to mid-20th century.

Freeman turned to novel-writing after 1895, seeing the short story form as a ‘little melody’ compared to the ‘grand opera’ of the novel, but did not meet with the same success as she did with her short fiction. Freeman’s work generally focused on characters and places in New England and often depicted women and their struggles with marriage. She herself married for the first time at the age of 49. She left over 145 short stories, many of which were uncollected, and her work has been enjoying a revival of critical attention over the past decades.

To read alongside...

Read the whole story here and see what happens when the husband returns!

‘The Revolt of “Mother”’ also reminds us of related works:

In Zora Neale Hurston’s story ‘Sweat’ (1926), an abusive husband is taken aback when his wife when she reminds him that it’s her ‘sweat, sweat, sweat’ that’s been paying the bills for their entire marriage. So fierce is she that, ‘a little awed by this new Delia, he sidled out of the door’ and fled to his lover. And she found herself fortified by this new strength in herself: ‘after that she was able to build a spiritual earthworks against her husband. His shells could no longer reach her. AMEN.’

Louisa May Alcott’s short story ‘Transcendental Wild Oats’ (1873) humorously shows the wives and daughters of a group of religious leaders in New England to have the practical know-how and resources, tending to everyone’s needs while the men have their minds on higher and—it turns out—utterly irrelevant things.

Susan Glaspell’s one-act play ‘Trifles’ (1916) stages the separate spheres of men and women and dramatizes how strictly these are demarcated, both physically and psychologically. Investigating a murder scene, the male detectives examine the whole house but ignore the kitchen as mere domestic space—even though it contains clear evidence of the murderer (the housewife) and her motive (self defense in the face of her husband’s domestic abuse).

Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak House (1853) has a dazzlingly inventive ending that, like Freeman’s story, centres on houses. Esther Summerson and Mr Woodcut are married and they are shown the new house that Mr Jarndyce has had built for them—an exact replica of his own house, which she loved and felt was home.

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