Essay/Term paper: The revolt of mother

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Position Papers

In "The Revolt of Mother," written by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, along with the narrator, we can experience how human beings communicate. Time and setting are the most important definitions of a person"s life. A person cannot change the time he lives in. He lives in the present, the past, or the future. However, his place in location, he is able to choose himself. If a person lives in a city, on a farm, in the mountains, or by the ocean—this can define the nature of his daily activities and even his character. The heroes of this story lived nearly a century ago. They resided on a farm. This was a time when there weren"t a lot of modern accommodations. That"s why Mother and Father had to do everything themselves. Mother raised the children, milked the cow, and cooked the food, which she produced on her own farm. Father also had many responsibilities, such as tending to the animals and farming. They both worked a lot—completed their own given tasks. This separates them from each other, and at the same time, adds to their character.

To all his wife"s questions—what he"s doing, what he"s building—Father has one answer, "Ain"t got nothin" to say about it." The reader wonders why Father does not share his thoughts with his wife. Maybe he thinks that she is not able to understand the necessity of building another barn. His reticence and stubbornness pushes his wife away form him. She does not show her pain. She remembers his promise, forty years ago, to build a more spacious house for their family, when her daughter Nanny brings it up. "Mother, don"t you think it"s too bad father"s going to build that new barn, much as we need a decent house to live in?"

A woman, like any mother, loves her children. Furthermore, if the child is weak, the mother"s love for the child increases, with addition of compassion. "She"s got considerable color, but there wasn"t never any backbone to her. …she ain"t fit to keep house an" do everything herself. She"ll be all worn out inside of a year." She searches for, and finds, who to share her pain with—her husband. "I"m goin" to talk real plain to you; I never have sence I married you, but I"m goin" to now. I ain"t never complained an" I ain"t goin" to complain now, but I"m goin" to talk plain." Her character changes. She becomes more certain in her decision to change the way she lives, to make it better for her daughter"s sake. However, Father has the same comforting answer for her, "I ain"t got nothin" to say."

There are two opposing feelings inside her—the love for her husband and the compassion for her daughter. She wants to improve the living conditions of her family, but at the same time, she doesn"t want to upset the husband she loves. "However deep a resentment she might be forced to hold against her husband, she would never fail in sedulous attention to his wants."

Fate answers this question. There are two well-known sayings, "You can"t run away from your fate," and "A person determines his own fate." This is exactly what happened to our heroin. When Father left the farm for a short time, Mother took a stand. She, with the help of her children, transferred all their belongings from the old house into the new structure. "Nanny and Sammy [the son] followed their mother"s instructions without a murmur…Nanny went back and forth with her light load, and Sammy tugged with sober energy. She bravely changed her family"s situation. She provided her daughter a place to have a wedding. "It looked almost as home-like as the abandoned house across the yard had ever done."

For the past forty years, Mother quietly completed her chores around the house, and then some. She never revealed her character or tried to get her own way. Because of this, the house was always peaceful. The children grew up in a calm, gracious atmosphere. In this action of "moving," she unmasked her true self. Her"s is a very good quality in a woman. The ability to give in, let something go, to forget, is a very important trait and essential in a joint life of a couple. But the husband has to possess this as well.

Father did not have an easy character to deal with. He did a big part of the work for the family. He worried about the expansion of the farm. In their time, machines did not work the field or water the plants; there were no buttons to push and make it easier, as there are today. Despite all this, however, Father never took his hardships out on the family.

He answered his wife"s questions with silence. His mistake was that he didn"t explain, to his wife, the necessity of building a new barn. He didn"t include her or make her his equal. In fact, she had to find out from her son what her husband was doing. His way of answering his wife gives off a feeling of indifference. Forty years of a life together is a long time. Therefore, these two people, Mother and Father, love each other a lot. This is why, when Father returned home, there wasn"t a big commotion. He saw that life was better for his loved ones. Moreover, it made him sad to see how long he didn"t get it—that his wife was unhappy. "Why, mother, I hadn"t no idee you was so set on"t as all this comes to."