Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Joseph R. McElrath, Jr.

Critical Essay by Joseph R. McElrath, Jr.

SOURCE: “The Artistry of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's ‘The Revolt,’” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 17, No. 3, Summer, 1980, pp. 255–61.

In the following essay, McElrath explores the four-phase narrative structure in “The Revolt of Mother” that culminates in an ending that is “vintage Howellsian realism” and literary artifice.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's “The Revolt of Mother” is a short story which is now receiving a good deal of attention because of its relevance to the history of American feminism. The mother in revolt is one of those tough-minded, self-aware, and determined females that began to appear at the close of the nineteenth century when the so-called New Woman was assuming clear definition. And there's no need to quibble over feminists' characteristic distortions and general hobby-horse riding: Sarah Penn is the real thing, a female who successfully revolts against and liberates herself from a familial situation of pernicious...
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