Renaming the world: freeman's revolt of mother.

Abstract

This paper shows how a stylistic approach of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's "The Revolt o 'Mother'" best articulates Mrs. Penn's self-assertion and appropriation of male discourse. Indeed Mrs. Penn's increasing control of language and assertion of her subjectivity become more evident through a close examination of the social deictics speech acts and speech thoughts, lexis and figures of speech within the text.

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Martha J. Cutter's article "Frontiers of Language: Engendering Discourse in "The Revolt of 'Mother'," is an excellent study detailing the gendered nature of language in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's "The Revolt of 'Mother'." Women, according to her, fail to communicate in the male-dominated world because of gender language differences. It is only when women are able to wrestle language from males through revolutionary renaming that true understanding between the sexes can take place. Freeman's "The Revolt of 'Mother'," the story of Ms. Penn who moves into the barn her husband builds at the place he promised to erect a house forty years ago, well illustrates current feminist and recent linguistic and literary developments, preferring referential and propositional meaning. The oppressive nature of language, treated in Robin Lakoff's Language and Woman's Place and Francine Frank and Frank Anshen's Language and the Sexes, is the gist of the 'The Revolt of "Mother." As Cutter so eloquently states in her article, "[t]his story [...] might enact a truce, a temporary act of communication that is successful, that invents a system of discourse which slips free from the binary system of sexual difference, of patriarchal or non-patriarchal language, of speaking men or silent women, of barn versus home" (291).

Numerous critics have written on the subversiveness of "The Revolt of 'Mother'." Joseph R McElrath, Jr. and Patricia M. Dwyer examine respectively how Freeman uses anticlimax narrative technique and voice to subvert male discourse. Elaine Orr discusses the relational nature of Mother's negotiation with her husband, Mr. Penn. Elizabeth Meese expounds on the contradictory critical receptions of the work and "the ambiguities of language" in Freeman's writerly text. And both Joseph Church and Cutter focus on discursive practices in "The Revolt of 'Mother'" and Mother's reconfiguration of male patriarchal structures. All the above critic eloquently and competently argue the prominent role of language in Freeman's text. Yet, I believe that a stylistic approach to "The Revolt of 'Mother'" best conveys to students the exclusion of women in the production of meaning and their need to appropriate male discourse. The above articles demonstrate that language is a conceptual grid through which we experience reality and females' relationship to language. But, they fail to explore the power relationships inherent in language use even though it is skillfully conveyed in "The Revolt of 'Mother'" through lexis, social deictics, speech acts, and the editorial comments of the omniscient narrator's figures of speech. Freeman's story is, in itself, an example of language appropriation.

Students frequently contend that meaning in literary texts is arbitrary and fluid because of the opacity and ambiguity of language. Indeed, the majority of critics, cited above, foreground the gendered nature of language and the problematic of textual interpretation. Still a stylistic approach, in my opinion, best provides students a sense of stable textual meaning by empowering them to discover the relational meaning of words, how the organization of language, utterance and social contexts affect meaning, and how language structure affects our understanding ant place in the world. Because the text acquires more significance through the interplay of its various linguistic features, as shown in this paper, students also become more attentive responders to the text.

Language, according to Roger Fowler, is "the chief instrument of socialization, which is the process by which a person is, willy nilly, moulded into conformity with the established systems of beliefs of the society into which s/he happens to be born"(30). Indeed, Thomas McLaughlin claims that "'it is part of the fabric of social and political life. It shapes our perceptions, but it is also shaped by its social context" (87). Language acquisition, however, is not an innocent act, for Deborah Cameron contends that, among other social factors, "the order of language is a masculine order dominated by the phallus; hence those who do not possess the phallus women remain marginal to language, in the culture (since women are compelled to learn to speak) but not entirely of it (9)."

In the "The Revolt of 'Mother'," however, Freeman de-absolutizes language through binary character representations and gender use of language. Because language is gender determined, women have to become definers to establish their counter-discourse as the norm that shapes the world. Therefore, it is only when Mother, Mrs. Penn, the heroine of the story, affirms her power and agency, through her use of language, and shifts from influence (achieving through men, children and services rendered to others) to personal power (transcendence) that she dismantles established beliefs and thus redefines the worldview of language. Since encodings of human experience are materialized through determined binary oppositions, empowering discourse, prompting women to action, can alone eventually create an egalitarian society.

The social and hierarchical linguistic distinction between men and women is well established in "The Revolt of 'Mother'" from the onset of the story. Since the title of the story foregrounds the word "Mother" by putting it between scarecrow quotations, associating the word "mother" with pejorative biological and social connotations, the reader carries these presuppositions to the story which begins in medias res with Mother calling her husband "Father." Obviously, the reader's directed decoding of the text establishes Mrs. Penn's objectification by making her an absence. By referring to him by his social and family role, she reveals the formal and hierarchical relationship between them. As father, Mr. Penn becomes the lawgiver while Mother holds her immanent role of procreator. Mrs. Penn, to whom Mr. Penn also refers as "Mother," is, nonetheless, always formally called "Mrs. Penn" or "Sarah Penn." Note that Mrs. Penn is referred to as either "Sarah Penn" or "Mrs. Penn" thirty-one times, whereas her husband is called Adoniram Penn only three times: once, to establish his relationship with Mrs. Penn. The second time, to indicate, with an of genitive, his possession of the architect and, with the genitive, the barn. Thirdly, he is referred to again as Adoniram when the minister wonders bow he will deal with his wife. All three times Adoniram Penn's name is used as a subjective genitive of possession to indicate possession. Nonetheless, while Mrs. Penn's objectification is further reinforced by the very nature of the genitive personal name which functions like a determiner, the architect, on the other hand, is not determined by the subjective genitive, but is rather post modified. Moreover, Mother never determines Father, for when their relationship is spelt out, a non restrictive genitive of apposition is used. Hence, Mrs. Penn is, as evinced in the omniscient narrator's numerous references to her husband's name, the possession of Mr. Penn. Even though Adoniram Penn is, once, referred to as Penn to establish the relation between Mrs. Penn and him, he is from then onwards twenty-seven times solely referred to as Adoniram. He, unlike Mrs. Penn, is a free subject. Mrs. Penn, herself, reinforces and condones the objectification of women by calling her daughter Nanny, a nickname that puns on her future biological social function of minder of children.

The hierarchic binary opposition of women and men is further crystallized in the lexical choice of the passages portraying the characters. Both Mother and Nanny are described with adjectives, adverbs, and similes connoting softness and malleability. Hence, Mother is physically small and short; her forehead is "mild and benevolent" between smooth curves of gray hair, and she has "meek downward lines about her nose and mouth" (148). Despite her gray hair, connoting a certain age, mother's figure is "straight-waisted like a child"'s. Similarly, Nanny has a "sweet face," a slow voice and a tender, sweet face "full of gentle distress." Her forehead is "as bald and innocent as a baby's" and her face is "as delicate as a flower" and "fine and clear as porcelain" (150). The adjectives "soft," "meek," "sweet," "mild," "small" "benevolent," "gentle" and "tender" and the similes "like a child" and "as a baby" reveal that both Mother and Nanny share common characteristics with babies. The connotation of the adverb "slow," moreover, suggests their immanence and static nature, since "slow" implies moving with difficulty. With harmless, delicately fine and clear porcelain faces, fragile bodies and harmless minds, both Nanny and Mother are not to be taken seriously. Conversely, when Father and Sammy are described, father, compared to a Roman Charioteer, "stand[s] as proudly upright"(153) and "jounc[es] sturdily on his seat like a boy" (148). Sammy, on the other hand, is lightly built and clumsy, difficult to control and handle. Whereas the adjectives used to describe both Mother and Nanny connote fragility, the adjective "clumsy," the adverbs of manner "proudly" and "high" and the simile as "proudly upright" as a Roman charioteer, describing the males of the family, underscore their freedom, power, dignity and grandeur. Although Mr. Penn is called "the old man" at the end of the story, "old" in this context does not connote senility--as the free direct thought, signaled by the colon, suggests--but endearment.

The hierarchic relations of sexes are also observed in the nature of their conversations. While the principle of cooperation governs human speech acts, Father--as the guardian of language--refuses to cooperate, hoping, thus, to maintain Mother in the world of nature. Through his confrontational tactics, he hopes to determine the users and the nature of the language:

   "Father!"
   "What is it?"
   "What are them men diggin' over there in the field for?"
   There was a sudden dropping and enlarging of the lower part of the
   old man's face, as if some heavy weight had settled therein; he
   shut his mouth tight, and went on harnessing the great bay mare.
   He hustled the collar on to her neck with a jerk.
   "Father!"
   The old man slapped the saddle upon the mare's back.
   "Look here, father, I want to know what them men are diggin (1)
   over in the field for, an' I'm going to know."
   "I wish you'd go into the house, Mother, an' tend to your own
   affairs," the old man said then. He ran his words together, and
   his speech was almost inarticulate as a growl. But the woman
   understood; it was her most native tongue. (147-48)

When Mrs. Penn calls her husband, we expect the latter's cooperation. Surprisingly, he responds with a directive question "What is it?", thus connoting his impatience. And when Mother expresses the desire to know why the men are digging in the yard, he contains the out flow of words filling his mouth and continues to harness the bay. His lack of cooperation and silence, meant to control Mother, metaphorically, is dramatized through the bay mare in the saddle of which he prepares to be. When he finally concedes to interrupt this silence, it is to express his desire to see her tend to her affairs." This command is said, according to the narrator's representation of speech acts, in an ambiguous manner. Although Mr. Penn breaks the Gricean maxim of relation, Mother perfectly understands his language because, although alien to her, it is, according to the narrator, "her most native tongue," the superlative most suggesting that she masters more than one language.

Since George Lakoff and Mark Johnson contend that all human experiences take place within "a vast background of cultural presuppositions" and "that our culture is already present in the very experience itself'(57), language, culture, according to Father is a male domain, whereas nature--the house--is female. This is evident in the passage depicting Father doggedly looking at Mother while he is tightening the harness. According to the narrator, "she looked as immovable to him as one of the rocks in his pasture land, bound to the earth with generations of blackberry vines"(148) Through this semantic deviation Mother and the rock share the property of being permanent. Moreover, since both are tied to nature by generations of umbilical blackberry vines, they are both objects to be conquered and dominated. Father maintains his control of the symbolic order by excluding Mother from culture and maintaining her in the house/nature and by sharing his knowledge only with his son, Sammy. Like his Father, Sammy controls and protects his knowledge. Having learned the language of his father, when Nanny asks him whether he knew that his father was going to build a barn, he simply ignores her. But when Nanny insists, he reluctantly shows a "face like his father's" (149) and acquiesces.

When both Father and Sammy do condescend to cooperate with their female interlocutors, they only give scanty information and give irrelevant answers and constantly break Gricean maxims of quantity. Sammy, moreover, withholds information from his mother on the grounds he "Didn't think 'twould do no good" (149). On the other hand, Father does not have the courtesy to inform Mother of his plans, yet he gives his son, Sammy, more consideration than his wife. Like a child, she has to tease the answers out of both Father and Sammy who respectively break both Grice's cooperative principle and maxim of quantity through their silence. Father's lack of consideration for Mother is also rendered in his tendency to break the maxim of relevance as shown in Mother and Father's exchange when the former persists to talk to the latter. When Nanny leaves, Mrs. Penn goes to the door:

   [...]"Father! "she called.
   "Well, what is it!"
   "I want to see you just a minute, father."
   "I can't leave this wood nohow. I've got to git it unloaded an' go
   for a load of gravel afore two o'clock. Sammy had ought to helped
   me. You hadn't ought to let him go to school so early."
   "I want to see you jest a minute". (150-51)

Annoyed by his wife's persistence, Father avoids talking to her on the pretense that he has too much work. Yet, it is evident through Mr. Penn's use of the modal "You hadn't ought" and "I have got to," expressing obligation, that both Mother and Father know that father's comment is irrelevant. The model also implies that Mother should tend to her business, such as tending to the children, instead of disturbing him. Father's apparent power and dominance is illusory, however, for the narrator states that Mother had "meek downward lines about her nose and mouth; but her eyes, fixed upon the old man, looked as if the meekness had been the result of her own will, never of the will of another" (148). Mother may be silent since lines of meekness run around her mouth; yet the contrast "but" clearly signals that this silence is self induced. Mother's self conscious will to recognize Father's power is disclosed when she tells Nanny:

   [...]"You ain't found out yet we're women-folks, Nanny Penn," 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."(149)

The numerous negations Mother uses in the above excerpt indicate that Nanny will, as the predictive modal "will" stresses, eventually come to discover, find out and know, as the deontic "ought" suggests, that men believe that women are inferior. The adverb "only," on the other hand, shows that Mother apprehends reality from both female and male perspectives. Despite her awareness of female oppression, Mother continues to be governed by the Law of the Father because she saves, according to Brown and Levinson's theory, Father's positive face when he is constantly threatening her negative face. She also remains silent, even after he has humiliated her: "You hadn't ought to judge Father, though," she tells Nanny. "He can't help it', cause he don't look at things jest the way we do" (149). Mother, believing that Father can only perceive reality from his perspective, pardons his behavior and condemns herself to silence. From the beginning of the story, Mother wills herself to acknowledge the Law-of-the-Father by accepting an inferior position, expressed through the negative politeness she sustains during her irritating conversations with her husband even when Adoniram flagrantly ignores her.

By accepting her place within the house, as the Other inferior, Mrs. Penn loses her self identity. She tends her house so faithfully and in such a masterly way that it becomes lifeless, for the narrator states that "She was a masterly keeper of her box of a house. Her one living room never seemed to have in it any of the dust which the friction of life with inanimate matter produces" (150). Moreover, she is like an artist who is so perfect that she has no art. Through these similes it is evident that Mrs. Penn is all immanence, static, because there is no contact between the animate (movement) and the inanimate (static). Her immanence is reinforced by the adverbs "faithfully," denoting stability, and "masterly"--denoting her great competence in maintaining and transmitting oppression, conveyed through the noun "box," connoting the smallness and the entrapment of the house/nature.

Mother's value and selfhood resides in perfecting her subservient nature through the numerous self sacrificing services she renders her man and her environment. Since she has learned to identify herself with what she does for her husband, she faithfully and steadfastly makes mince pies because her husband Adoniram likes them, the verb "like," denoting he finds them pleasurable. While she anticipates his desires, he, on the other hand, has no consideration for her desires and her feelings. Although upset, Mrs. Penn unquestioningly cuts out shirts for him, lies out his clothes, gets his shaving water and razor ready, buttons his collar and fastens his black cravat because her society has taught her to relinquish her selfhood and to define her achievement through her husband or son. As Judith Lowder Newton, quoting Sarah Ellis, so aptly states:

   It is necessary for her to lay aside all her natural caprice, her
   love of self indulgence, her vanity, her indolence--in short, her
   very self--and assuming a new nature, which [is] to spend her
   mental and moral capabilities in devising means for promoting the
   happiness of others, while her own derives a remote and secondary
   existence from theirs. (767)

Mother's abnegation is best rendered through the speech she makes to persuade Father to build a house instead of a barn. Convinced that if Father was made to see the necessity of a house, he would reconsider building the house, Mother decides to talk real plain to him. To draw the deteriorating, bad state of the rooms to his attention, she uses several times the perception verb "see" and comparisons between herself and other women to make her point. Mother's language does not, however, convince Father because she uses repetitions and her discourse is rampant with conjunctions. When Mother begins her speech, she feels the need to emphasize that she will speak plainly and that what she says is worth listening to. Thus, she says: "I'm goin' to talk real plain to you; [...] I ain't never complained, an' I ain't goin' to complain now, but I'm goin' to talk plain" (151). The repetitions and the negations of these sentences all concord to show her negation of her community's definition of complaint so that her husband does not perceive her talk as mere complaint. Her lack of control and assertiveness is, also, apparent in her use of conjunctions. For example, the conjunctions in the following sentences: "It's all the room Nanny's got to have her company in; an' there ain't one of her mates but what's got better, an' their fathers not so able as hers is"(151) are far from being direct; they are, at most, indirect requests which are supposed to emulate Mr. Penn to action. Mother's plain language puns on homeliness and ordinariness for her discourse turns into an emotional rambling, manifested in the compilation of the additive conjunction "and."

Furthermore, although Mrs. Penn uses the rhetorical strategies ethos and pathos, the place deictics "there" and "here" suggest that Mother must be gesticulating as she goes from one room to another. Desperate, she appeals to his sense of honor. Despite his promises and declarations, Father does not surrender. Mother then shows father how he threatens her negative face--underscored by the models "I've got to," "should," "I'll have to go" and "I can't have it so"--by compelling her to endure more years within her actual house. These models--expressing obligation and rampant in her exposition--disclose her oppression, for she is always coerced into doing things: "I've got along forty year, an' I s'pose I should forty more," "I've always took the heft of everything off her" (152). Having failed to appeal to her husband's feelings, Mother reminds him of his promise to build the house. From his point of view he is not committed to keep promises made to a female and, thus, continues to refuse all cooperation by remaining silent. When 'questioned further, he impolitely discourses on other irrelevant matters because his wife's speech has no rationality as he confidentially tells Sammy: "It's a strange thing how your mother feels about the new barn" (153). Mr. Penn misinterprets his wife, once again, by perceiving her from his biased dominant perspective. The verb "feel" surely reinforces her emotions, as opposed to logic.

Resigned, Mother carries out her chores as usual until Nanny remarks one day that they could eventually have the wedding in the barn. When Nanny asks: "Why, mother, what makes you look so?" (153), it is obvious that Mrs. Penn's facial expression has changed. Nanny's question concerning her mother's appearance suggests that something has moved Mrs. Penn to the extent of transforming her. She is said to stare at Nanny with a curious expression. Both the adverbial of manner and the intransitive verb indicate that an interesting idea has crossed her mind. However, she politely withholds, like Father, the information from Nanny. In the meantime Mr. Penn receives a letter, informing him that there was a horse on sale in Vermont, from his brother in law Hiram. Contrarily to Mother and Nanny who rely on others to actualize their dreams, Father designs and creates his world. Mother and Nanny's dependency and subservience is manifested in their use of negative yes no questions such as: "You ain't goin to build a barn over there we was goin' to have a house, father?" and "Oh, mother, he ain't going to build another barn?" (148). These yes no questions express their disappointment, disbelief, and surprise since they hoped for a positive outcome, but also their impotence. While Mrs. Penn needs to speak plainly to her husband, he plainly talks to himself, although he is supposedly speaking to his wife:

   "I dun' know but what I'd better go," said Adoniram. "I hate to go
   off jest now, right in the midst of hayin', but the ten acre lot's
   cut, an' I guess Rufus an' the others can git along without me
   three or four days. I can't get a horse round here to suit me,
   nohow, an' I've got to have another for all the wood haulin' in the
   fall. I told Hiram to watch out, an' if he got wind of a good horse
   to let me know. I guess I'd better go."(153)

Even though Mr. Penn's speech is equally filled with conjunctions, his discourse, unlike Mrs. Penn's compilations of information, is highly logical and calmly executed. His sentences use coordination to convey the causal effect of the semantic relations of his reflections. The verb "hate" expresses Mr. Penn's emotional attitude while the conjunction "but" expresses exception. Moreover, Father's conjunction "and," contrary to those used by his wife, has the sense of consequence. Mr. Penn's decision is already made from the very beginning, for the cognitive verb "know" preceded by the negation "not," doubly negated by the contrast "but," clearly indicates the possibility of going. Finally like a well-constructed paragraph, his argument ends with the conclusion to leave.

Although Mrs. Penn assists her husband and politely cooperates when he requests that she ensure that the cows are taken to the barn if the cows arrive on that day, Mother has changed, as shown in her body language. Firstly, her eyes have a strange, doubtful expression in them and her peaceful forehead is contracted. The adjective "strange" and the adverb "doubtful" indicate a change in her steadfast soul. This physical change is, nevertheless, temporary because as she works "her perplexed forehead smoothe[ns]" (154). Even though she assumes her soft countenance, her eyes remain "steady, her lips firmly set" (154). Evidently, Mother has taken the decision--implied in the parallelism between the curious expression she has when Nanny suggests that the wedding take place in the barn and the strange, doubtful look in her eyes--to move into the barn since the adjective "steady" and the adverb "firmly" denote a sense of firmness, control and determination. Her decision is articulated, though, according to the narrator, by incoherent, unlettered thoughts--thoughts which are, as conveyed by the adjective "unlettered" and the adverb "incoherently," outside culture and ambiguous.

Mother's unlettered words become, nevertheless, increasingly coherent and logic. Her control of language is, firstly, observed through the limited information she gives in her succinct sentences. When Nanny asks her what she is talking about, she simply says 'Nothin' (153), and when her husband asks her to ensure that the cows are taken to the barn, she simply replies "'Well" (154). Once in control, like Father, she orders the workers not to put the hay in the barn. Henceforward, she continues to order people in her environment and to express her desires, as opposed to anticipating and tending to the desires of others. "Don't put the hay in the barn; put it in the old one," she says (154). "You'd better eat your dinner now " "I want you to help me afterward." "If you're through, Nanny, I want you to go upstairs an' pack up your things; an I want you, Sammy, to help me take down the bed in the bedroom" (155). Both the imperatives and the verb "want," expressing advisability but which in effect is a threatening order, underscore Mrs. Penn's new control of her environment and her emergence as subject since she addresses her emotional needs. The omniscient intruding narrator's narrative of her feat also confirms the change in Mrs. Penn when she compares Mrs. Penn's relocation to the barn to Wolf's storming of the heights of Abraham. The nouns "genius," "audacity" and "bravery"--military terminologies generally associated with military males and used comparatively to describe her action--are clear indications that Mrs. Penn has moved from passivity and inferiority (nature) to action (culture). Mother's accession to culture is not, however, total because Father continues to control the symbolic world as shown in the related narration of the narrator:

   Every builder builds somewhat for unknown purposes and is in a
   measure a prophet. The architect of Adironam Penn's barn, while he
   designed it for the comfort of four footed animals, had planned
   better than he knew for the comfort of humans. Sarah Penn saw at a
   glance its possibilities. These great box-stalls, with quilts hung
   before them, would make better bedrooms than the one she had
   occupied for forty years, and there was a tight carriage room. The
   harness-room, with its chimney and shelves, would make a kitchen of
   her dreams. (155)

Since the present tense "build," associated with Mr. Penn the builder, conveys a sense of permanence, Father's position remains quite stable or dominant. Mrs. Penn's volition, on the other hand, does not emerge from the text because she uses the modal "would," conveying probability, uncertainty and the counter-discursive nature of her identification of the barn as home. Despite Mrs. Penn's uncertainty as to the outcome of her project, she has become a subject. Because the author gives her, of all the characters, free indirect thought, it is obvious that she is not all emotions, as Mr. Penn assumes. Her individuality also emerges through the community's disapproval of "Adoniram Penn's wife moving into the new barn" and her new spatial position within her society. According to the narrator's ironic generic sentence, her society does not easily accept change so "progress stopped" in her town and "everybody paused to look at the staid, independent figure on the side track." Through the above metaphorical rendition of Mrs. Penn's spatial position, it is obvious that, through her independence, she has isolated herself, like the sidetrack, from her community. By defying the Law-of-the-Father, she becomes "insane," "lawless" and "rebellious"--all these adjectives exhibiting her uncontrolled nature.

Mother attains selfhood, reflected in her demeanor, assertiveness, and language, only when she totally assumes responsibility for her actions and beliefs. When the minister comes to reason her into moving back into the house, Mrs. Penn breaks the maxim of politeness by not inviting him into the house, as she would have normally done. Moreover, the fixed saintly expression on her face has an angry flush. The juxtaposition of the adjective "fixed" and the adverb "saintly" and the contrastive conjunction "but" clearly denote a change within her. Furthermore, states the narrator, she handles the peas she is shelling like bullets, a noun generally associated with military male activities, and her eyes uncover the spirit her meek front had hidden for years. In control, Mother initiates the conversation and firmly tells the minister:

   "There ain't no use talkin.' [...] "I've thought it all over, an'
   over, an' I believe I'm doin' what's right. I've made it the
   subject of prayer, an it's betwixt me an' the Lord an' Adoniram.
   There ain't no call for nobody else to worry about it." [...] " I
   Think it's right jest as much I think it was right for our
   forefathers to come over from the old country 'cause they didn't
   have what belonged to' em, [...] I've got my own mind an' my own
   feet, an' I'm goin' to think my own thoughts an' go my own ways,
   an' nobody but the Lord is goin' to dictate to me unless I've a
   mind to have him. (156)?"

Mother has become a thinking subject as evinced in the cognitive verb "think" rampant in her discourse and the verb "believes" expressing inner conviction. Even when she uses the auxiliary "have" she is the object to be possessed. Mother is, henceforward, the master of her thoughts, her mind, and her body. No one will ever tell her what to do again, as revealed in the progressive tense, expressing promise, of "I'm goin' to think my own thoughts an 'go my own ways," unless she personally decides to let him/her. Once she has made the statement, has told her mind, she proceeds to be polite. Her politeness in this case is a normal social act without implications of inferiority. Having attained selfhood mother can now be named. Thus, the narrator writes: "When Adoniram's four new cows arrived, Sarah (my italics) ordered three to be put in the old barn, the other in the house shed [...](156)." On an equal footing with her husband, she and he can both be called by their first names, distinguishing them from the other family members. Imperturbable, we are told, Sarah Penn awaits her husband. When the latter arrives, dismayed to discover that his family has moved to the new barn, Father becomes less self assured. When he opens the barn door, the great Canadian farm horse to which he is metaphorically compared, has a mild face. Like the horse, Father is less brazen. Having lost control, since he is said to be dazed (disoriented), he becomes speechless: "his lips moved; he was saying something, but they could not hear what it was"(157). Unlike the words he self consciously retained in his mouth when he was fully under control, the words that currently fill his mouth are inexpressible. It is clear that there is a reversal in Father and Mother's situation, so the former is no longer the guardian of words.

While Father loses his self assurance, Mother gains hers. Father's loss of control of the symbolic order is illustrated in the non fluency, revealing his lack of confidence, of his question: "What" Adoniram sniffed--"What is it smells like cookin' (157)? The repetitions of what within his question clearly imply his lack of control. Mother, on the other hand, who had initially used questions to express her resignation and disappointment, converts to a mixture of declarative and imperative sentences:

   "You come in here, father," said Sarah. She led the way into the
   harness room and shut the door. "'Now, father," said she, "you
   needn't be scared. I ain't crazy. There ain't nothin to be upset
   over. But we've come here to live, an' we're goin' to live here.
   We've got jest as good a right here as new horses an' cows. The
   house wa'n't fit for us to live in any longer, an' I've made up my
   mind I wa'n't goin' to stay there. I've done my duty by you for
   forty year, an' I'm goin' to do it now; but I'm goin' to live here.
   You've got to put in some windows and partitions; an' you'll have
   to buy some furniture." (157)

Having well mastered the situation, mother's discourse is full of speech acts expressing command. Though Mother reassures Father, to save his positive face, she firmly conveys through the conjunction "but" her decision to live in the barn. While she had earlier appealed to his sensitivity and honor, she now posits herself as an actant subject by opening the door and leading the way. Furthermore, She threatens Father's negative face by ordering him to put in the partitions and the windows and to buy furniture. Whereas she initially used questions to express her disappointment and resignation and to appeal to his understanding, she now uses imperatives telling him what he has to do. Foremost, she begins to use the pronoun "we," evincing her newly acquired assurance to take decisions for her family.

Although Mother has become a speaking subject, she does not totally attain selfhood. Sympathetic to her just cause--revealed in the comparison of the barn with the house, said to be "scarcely as commodious for people as the little boxes under the barn eaves were for doves" (148) the narrator calls the heroine either Sarah Penn or Sarah in accordance with her behavior. When she conventionally dresses up for Mr. Penn and cooks his favorite meal, she is referred to as Sarah Penn; conversely, she is called Sarah when she asserts herself. The incompleteness of mother's self realization is also rendered through the landscape. The pathetic fallacy attributing feeling and quality to inanimate nature suggests the relationship between the couple and nature and Mrs. Penn's partial self awareness: "There was a clear green glow in the sky. Before them stretched the smooth level of the field; [...]; the air was very cool and calm and sweet. The landscape might have been an ideal one of peace" (158). Through the adjective "green" (connoting growth) and "smooth," "cool," "calm," and "sweet"--all conveying positive, agreeable, and peaceful feelings--it is obvious that the personified landscape emanates a sense of peace; the modal "might," expressing epistemic possibility, suggests, however, that the landscape is only full of hope.

According to the narrator, total selfhood can only be achieved within an androgynous world. While Mother has gained linguistic control, Mr. Penn has become speechless and has assumed some female characteristics. Dumbfounded after witnessing the changes that have taken place during his absence, the few words the latter musters to say are "Why Mother" (157)! Physically weakened, he truly needs his wife's assistance to remove his coat. Mrs. Penn even has to remind him to bless the meal. Vanquished--as suggests the semantic deviation comparing Adoniram to "a fortress whose walls had no active resistance and went down the instant the right besieging tools were used"(158)--and overwhelmed, Father weeps and promises to put up the partitions and do every thing else she wants. Female subjectivity, according to the narrator, is therefore, possible solely through the appropriation of revolutionary language.

While "The Revolt of 'Mother'" depicts a probable fictive world, the world of Freeman, on the other hand, is in the process of creating an androgynous language and world view. Through the act of writing "The Revolt of 'Mother,'" Freeman breaks the silence Mrs. Penn has had to maintain for years and inscribes women into history. Her empowering discourse and her speaking voice, within the male dominated literary arena, is an act of language appropriation, that paves the way to an androgynous future. In the more concise words of Shoshona Felman, Freeman is challenged to reinvent "language [...] to speak not only against but outside the structure [...] to establish a discourse the status of which would no longer be defined by the phallacy of male meaning" (qtd. in Cameron, 9). Likewise, through their analysis of literary discourse, student participants are also empowered, through their close examinations of binary oppositions, the structure of language, and the social and textual contexts of words, to develop a better understanding of the relationship between meaning and text and to appropriate the text.

Works Cited

Cameron, Deborah. The Feminist Critique of Language. Ed. London: Routledge, 1990.

Church, Joseph. "Reconstructing Woman's Place in Freeman's "The Revolt of 'Mother'." Colby Quarterly 26.2 (1990): 195-200.

Cutter, Martha J. "Frontiers of Language: Engendering Discourse in 'The Revolt of 'Mother'." American Literature. 63.2 (1991): 279-291.

Dwyer, Patricia. "Diffusing Boundaries: A Study of Narrative Strategies in Mary Wilkins Freeman's "The Revolt of 'Mother'." Legacy. 10. 2 (1993): 120-7.

Frank, Francine and Frank Anshen. Language and the Sexes. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983.

Freeman, Wilkins Mary E. "The Revolt of 'Mother.'" The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 2nd ed. vol. 2. Eds. Paul Lanter and Richard Yarborough et al. Lessington: D.C. Heath, 1994. 147-158.

Fowler, Roger. Linguistic Criticism. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Lakoff, Robin. Language and Women's Place. New York Harper and Row, 1975.

MacLaughlin, Thomas. "Figurative Language." Critical Terms for Literary Study. Eds. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.80-90.

McElrath, Joseph, Jr. "The Artistry of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's "The Revolt." Critical Essays on Mary Wilkins Freeman. Ed. Shirley Marchalons. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co, 1991. 132-138.

Meese, Elizabeth. "Signs of Undecidability: Reconsidering the Stories of Mary Wilkins Freeman." Critical Essays on Mary Wilkins Freeman. Ed. Shirley Marchalons. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co, 1991.157-176.

Newton, Judith Lowder. "Power and the Ideology of 'Women's Sphere'." Feminisms." Eds. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991. 765-780.

Orr, Elaine. "Reading Negotiation and Negotiated Reading: Reading: A Practice with/in "A White Heron" and "The Revolt of 'Mother'." CEA Critic 53.3 (1991): 49-65.

Dr. Chiwengo, associate professor of English and Director of Creighton University English, Department's World Literature Program, obtained her Ph.D. in English at SUNY/Buffalo. He research and teaching interests are in American, African American and African literatures.