Robert Gaudiosi
A New England Nun
In this story, "A New England Nun" by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Louisa Ellis (the new England nun) waits for a man for fourteen years to marry her Louisa holds the guilt of having Joe Daggat as her first lover. In these 14 years, she is stuck in a spotlessly clean house with two animals: a dog and a bird; her house becomes an immediate prison as she waits for a man for 14 years. Like Louisa, the dog and bird are both chained up or locked up.
However, she is satisfied with her life of solitude. When her fiancee, Joe Daggat, finally comes back from earning his fortune overseas, she feels that her life has been disrupted. His appearance at her house shakes everything up; the bird would flutter about wildly in its cage and things would get knocked down. Joe Daggat himself would feel "as if surrounded by a hedge of lace" every time he went to visit Louisa. "He was afraid to stir lest he should put a clumsy foot or hand through the fairy web, and he had always the consciousness that Louisa was watching fearfully lest he should.
Louisa fears that by marrying Joe Daggat, she would be released from her "chain" and that her simple life of solitude would end. This is a lot like Caesar, who is permanently chained up for biting a man. Louisa fears that by releasing Caesar, he would attack innocent children; thus, ending its life as a tamed dog. The wedding that she waited for came to be undesirable in the end. Louisa rather live a life at her secluded home with her dog and bird then to marry Joe Daggat, who would end up shattering her life of peaceful solitude.
After finding out that Joe Daggat is having a secret affair with another woman, Louisa parts ways with him. Instead of feeling deep remorse, she only cries a little bit. The next morning, " she felt like a queen who, after fearing lest her domain be wrested away from her, sees it firmly insured in her possession." The incident between Joe Daggat and the woman...