Although a prolific and popular writer in her day, Mary Wilkins Freeman has only recently been rediscovered and reevaluated as a realistic recorder of the status and sensibility of the New England woman in the early years of this century.

Women form the backbone of her stories. Within a framework tightly controlled by patriarchal and religious tradition, Freeman’s women strive for an understanding of the roles assigned to them. Through their relationships and responses, they test the limits of their freedom and learn the moral and personal consequences of rejecting or acquiescing to the roles the larger community has imposed on them.

The rebellious woman became a key these in Freeman’s stories and a major image in her gallery of fictional portraits of women. A Web of Relationship reveals how she sharply delineates the lives and personalities of women who accept of reject the ideal Victorian code of “true womanhood” as mother and wife. This study of Freeman’s stories throws