From the short story, “The Revolt of Mother,’’ by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, society in the late nineteenth century expected women to keep house, cook, bear and rear children. The male represents the authority in the family and society and the female represents the domesticity, the gentleness and the loyalty to the husband.

The woman depicted.

Adoniram Penn represents the male dominance over the female. His ideas represent the typical role of a man of the 19th century, a man who is occupied by the work and who believes he does not have to explain everything he makes to his wife, who is supposed to attend to the home tasks and not to question what the husband makes. Where Sarah asks him what a few men are doing in the yard and he answers her: “I wish you’d go into the house, mother, and tend to your own affairs.”Sarah finds out that Adoniram is going to build a new barn instead of the new house he had promised: “A barn? You ain’t goin’ to build a barn over there where we was goin’ to have a house, father?” For him, his livestock has more worth than his own family. She claims the need of having a decent house to live in. Sarah, a woman who has been married to her husband for over forty years, sheepishly asking him to use the time, money, and energy that he is using to build a new, big barn into building a bigger home for the family “You see this room, father; it’s all the one I’ve had to work in an’ eat in an’ sit in since we was married (…) An’ this is all the room my daughter will have to be married in. Look here, father! (…) You’re lodgin’ your dumb beasts better than you are your own flesh an’ blood. I want to know if you think it’s right”. This is not done out of caprice. The family does need a bigger home and has needed a bigger home for quite some time; however, Adoniram is stubborn to build a bigger home. Sara is submissive which shows how women genuine needs could not be met by their husband. Adoniram seems to be quite selfish and does not take his wife into consideration, even after all these years. Moreover, he does not consider the fact that his daughter Nanny’s wedding is coming up and that by tradition, she would have to hold her wedding in their home, which is a small and shabby house.

Sarah’s decision, given that the rumor of Sarah’s rebellion was spread through the village: “There was a difference of opinion with regard to her. Some held her to be insane; some, of a lawless and rebellious spirit. Sarah sums up the plight of women when she says,
“You ain’t found out yet we’re women-folks, Nanny Penn,” said she. “You ain’t seen enough of men-folks yet to. One of these days you’ll find it out, an’ then you’ll know that we know only what men-folks think we do, so far as any use of it goes, an’ how we’d ought to reckon men-folks in with Providence, an’ not complain of what they do any more than we do of the weather.”

References

Freeman, M. E. (1993). The revolt of “Mother”. Mankato, Minn.: Creative Education.