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Schreck examines the narative structure of Mary Wilkins Freeman's short story "Silence."

There are several puzzling features in Mary Wilkins Freeman's "Silence," which first appeared in an 1893 issue of Harper's Magazine. Why, for example, does the scene with Silence Hoit calling for her lost fiance in a shrieking north-wind apparently recall a famous episode in Wuthering Heights (1847) when Catherine Earnshaw calls for Heathcliff in the stormy moors? Why is Goody Crane, who is associated with witchcraft, critical to the realization of Silence's desire to be with David Walcott, her fiance? Why does Goody Crane, in perhaps the most mysterious scene in the narrative, specifically employ a sheep skin to effect the reunion of Silence and David? Such unexplained elements, in a story bearing a title suggestive of more than the name of its protagonist, seem to cut across the grain of the conventional fictional formulae otherwise evident in "Silence."

This short story presents a typical chronicle of separated lovers finally reunited. Embedded in this plot, however, is a triad of provocative narrative properties that contribute structurally to another story suggested in the shadows of the conventional romance. In contrast to the focus on the relationship between Silence and David in the domestic romance, the relationship between Silence and Goody Crane is emphasized in the shadow tale. Goody Crane is the enabling agent in this phantom tale. She can in effect be read as a shadow figure, a type (as defined by Maxine Harris 43-55) whose rebellious behavior represents an archetype of the hidden or as yet unrealized part of a collective female identity presently delimited by social decorum. The shadow tale of "Silence" recounts Goody Crane's role in authorizing the autonomous expression of the witch-like power of female desire.

My mission in this discussion is to disclose this shadow plot. The presence of this plot in "Silence" can be interpreted as symptomatic of the warring sentiments, the authorial self-division, that various critics have generally detected in Freeman's work. Just as, for example, Freeman's compelling psychological portraits of strong women are often framed "with safe, sentimental beginnings and endings," the two story-lines of "Silence" may be construed as further evidence of her ambivalent performance as an author: "Freeman wanted to rebel openly, but at the same time she sought shelter and acceptability, even at the price of enslavement to standards that she knew to be oppressive and unjust" (Glasser xv).

That Freeman nonetheless manifested a feminist sensibility-whether adequately or inadequately-is currently also a critical consensus, and this view is likewise supported by the phantom tale in "Silence." So whereas, on the one hand, this submerged plot may be read in terms of Freeman's ambivalence, it may, on the other hand, also be contextualized in terms of a characteristic of resistance literature. The shadow tale in "Silence," in other words, exemplifies the way resistance in fiction is frequently embedded in the tropes and figures of conventional narrative forms (Slemon 31). While my emphasis necessarily falls on such resistance elements because of the very nature of the shadow tale, I do not deny the possibility that in another sense such an embedding of the phantom narrative reflects Freeman's personal ambivalence concerning its feminist implications. My primary aim is to disclose a heretofore unrecognized facet of Freeman's artistry in a neglected story that provides further and different evidence of her skill with narrative technique (McElrath 255) and her revision of fictional conventions (Gardner 451).

At the level of historical or domestic romance, "Silence" is uncom liGated and unexceptional. It opens on the night of 28 February 1704, when the Abenaki warriors and French soldiers would destroy the western frontier settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts. Silence Hoit has several premonitions of, and Goody Crane predicts, the massacre of that night. The actual devastation is daunting, with many captives, including Silence's fiance, taken to Canada. During the attack Silence exhibits fortitude, but afterwards she seems to suffer from a post-traumatic disorder. The people around her worry about her mental state, especially whenever Silence ritualistically looks northward over a meadow and calls for David Walcott. Eighteen months later David returns from captivity, but despite his efforts Silence does not recognize him. Eventually Goody Crane directs David to wear a white sheep's fleece over his shoulders in the meadow under a full moon. Prompted by Goody Crane, Silence goes to her familiar haunt and calls for David, who appears in the sheep skin. Silence recovers her vision and now recognizes him. The story closes with the lovers embracing each other.

As this synopsis suggests, the main plot in "Silence" conforms to the formula for domestic fiction. The conventionality of "Silence" is not redeemed by its historical setting, and so it is not surprising that this work has been ignored by critics and excluded from collections of Freeman's best fiction. On casual encounter, this short story seems to offer little of special interest. It is, however, precisely against the textual fabric of such conventionality that three peculiar features in the work are accentuated. Insofar as these provocative narrative elements counter the sense of the ordinary conveyed by the main plot, they draw attention to themselves. They appear to intimate some obscure meaning within the shadows of the seemingly obvious.

All of these unusual narrative properties are related to Goody Crane. On first encounter, Goody Crane seems to contribute only to the historical matrix of the story:

She was a lonely and wretched old creature whom people sheltered from pity, although she was somewhat feared and held in ill repute. There were rumors that she was well versed in all the dark lore of witchcraft, and held commerce with unlawful beings. The children of Deerfield village looked askance at her, and clung to their mothers if they met her on the street, for they whispered among themselves that old Goody Crane rode through the air on a broom in the night-time. (9)

Goody Crane is "held to have occult knowledge" by adult figures, some of whom are "fain to believe that the old woman had been in league with the powers of darkness... and had so escaped harm" on the night of the raid on Deerfield (42-43). At one point, Silence's Aunt Eunice Bishop warns Goody Crane, "You'll be burned for a witch yet, Goody Crane, an you be not careful" (31).

Goody Crane is also associated with witchcraft, albeit not conclusively identified as a witch, by the narrative voice. On the day following the massacre, for instance, we are told that "Goody Crane slid in[to a room] like a swift black shadow out of the daylight" (30).' The narrative also indicates that Goody Crane's predictions do indeed come to pass, especially the bleak forecast of the destruction of Deerfield (4) and the heartening forecast of the return of David (36). At one point she reads Silence's palm (50), another indication of her occult knowledge. Pertinent, too, is an emphasis throughout the account on Goody Crane's unruly speech, a lingual trait considered in colonial America to be a characteristic of a witch (Kamensky 158-89). "Mutterings" (44) are typical of Goody Crane, who is manifestly insubordinate and defiant in her verbal responses to people. This is why Eunice Bishop warns her about the consequences of sounding like a witch.

Goody Crane, moreover, is well aware of her image in the community. On the day following the massacre she brazenly remarks to people, already inclined to believe that she has survived the night through occult powers, that "the living echo the dead, and that is enough wisdom for a witch" (31). Later, in the course of disclosing her scheme for David's moonlight deception, she assures him, "I'll try no witch-work but mine own wits.... If they would hang me for a witch for that, then they may. None but I can cure her" (50). Whether or not Goody Crane is truly a witch is less important to the shadow tale in "Silence" than is the fact of her management of the town's identification of her as a witch. She derives power from this perception, so much so that at one point even the upbraiding, narrow-minded Eunice is "tempt[ed] to consult old Goody Crane" (43). In fact, as her successful plan to unite David and Silence demonstrates, Goody Crane uses the power that proceeds from the communal perception of her as a witch for her own and others' advantage. Goody Crane seems to practice a medicinal form of witchery that was customary in early New England (Weisman 41-42), in this instance beneficent conjuring to further romance.2

At the level of the romance formula of the story, Goody Crane simply brings the lovers together. As a medicinal witch, she cures Silence of her post-traumatic mental condition. In the shadow tale, however, the connection between these two women is more complex. That they are more deeply associated in some way is hinted at in a fleeting, albeit revealing, reference to a similitude between them: "Silence looked at her. There was a strange likeness between the glitter in her blue eyes and that in Goody Crane's black ones" (31-32). This scene, curiously set off as a discrete paragraph, intimates some meaning never explicit in the short story. The word "strange" is particularly provocative in the passage because it very briefly insists on some indistinct implication in this mysterious similarity between the two women. Ideally a thought emerges in the reader's mind: What has this seemingly fugitive passage to do with an account about lovers separated and reunited? The historical romance, however, proceeds towards its formulaic resolution as if this "strange" moment had never occurred.

The unexplained silent exchange, with its stress on a "likeness" between the two women, has no function in the main story. Omit this moment and nothing is lost from the domestic plot of the reunion of David and Silence. The association of the two women is a shard from another narrative barely glimpsed in the shadows of the conventional story. This shadow narrative is not about the relationship between David and Silence; it is about the relationship between Goody Crane and Silence. The account of their relationship is presented in a way that narratively imitates Goody Crane's entrance on the day after the massacre. That is to say, the phantom tale of the bond between Goody Crane and Silence "slid[es] in[to the text] like a swift black shadow out of the daylight" of a conventional romance (30).

Goody Crane is cowed by neither public expectation nor individual censure. In fact, she derives personal sovereignty and power from the communal impression of her as a witch. She is outspoken, as if the conventions governing female decorum simply do not apply to her. Yet, for all her fierce independence, Goody Crane is not an isolate. She is one of those Freeman women who assert their autonomy yet also maintain relationships with other women (Reichardt xiv). Goody Crane allows other women in the community to pity and shelter her. She seeks their company. Still more indicative, she looks after Silence as if she were the mother of this orphaned young woman. In fact, she saves Silence at the cost of possibly being burned as a witch. Goody Crane's relationship with her surrogate daughter is troped as an act of restorative curing effected through the application of female "wit," intelligence and cunning. "I'll try no witch-work but mine own wits," Goody Crane promises David, and she indeed succeeds in "sav[ing the] poor maid's wits" (46, 50). As the enabling agent in the shadow tale, Goody Crane exhibits wit not only in her dramatic rescue of Silence; she also displays wit in her everyday behavior and speech, designed to exploit her communal image as a witch.

In the domestic romance Silence needs awakening from a trance-like mental state induced by David's absence; in the shadow tale she needs deliverance from the trance-like mental state of her subjection to authority figures such as her aunt. Eunice Bishop, Silence's custodial aunt, is the antithesis of Goody Crane. Eunice is vain, as is indicated by her preoccupation with a "gilt-framed looking-glass" (19-20). She can be insensitive, as is suggested by her annoyance with the men who save captives rather than secure her requested items (46). Her primary attribute, however, is a strict conformity to social expectations. As an authority figure, she insists on proper female behavior. She berates Silence for "unmaidenly" conduct, including her alleged inattention to chores and her courtship with David (11-13). Eunice stresses female submission to old-fashioned standards of normative behavior as a guarantee of a "good name" (53). "I stayed at home, and your uncle did the courting," she tells Silence; "I never went after nightfall to his house that he might see me home . I trow my mother would have locked me up in the garret, and kept me on meal and water, had I done aught so bold" (13). For Eunice, the ideal female is submissive and silent.

Eunice points to the example of her own mother to authorize her surrogate maternal role in reproving Silence. But this traditional claim is contested in the shadow narrative by a competing maternal figure, namely the very woman whose reputation as a witch makes children cling to their mothers (9). Goody Crane lurks in the shadows of the domestic romance where she dimly emerges as a more suitable motherfigure for Silence.

Although as her name suggests, Silence has yet much to learn from her outspoken mentor in the shadows, she and Goody Crane share personal traits, not just a "likeness" in their eyes. Like Goody Crane, Silence possesses a "steady heart that be not so easy turned as some" (41). Also pertinent is Silence's demonstration of autonomous power, especially in her speech, during the crisis of the French and Indian attack. On that occasion she speaks with a "firm voice," at one point even curtly telling her aunt to "stand off" and "be quiet" (16). Silence has a will, a sense of autonomy, but it tends to exert itself only in extraordinary circumstances. Such is the case of the sudden kiss she gives David "of her own accord, as if she had been his wife" (10), a spontaneous act inspired by her premonition of an attack on Deerfield. Normally Silence "wishe[s] him good-night ... without a kiss," for she is "chary of caresses" (10). In ordinary circumstances, in other words, Silence usually subordinates her wishes and defers to the social norms defended by her aunt.

When her aunt orders her to bind her hair, she does so. The symbolism of female constraint is evident in this gesture and in her subsequent behavior: "Silence bound up her hair, and sat down by her wheel meekly, and yet with a certain dignity" (40). This incident occurs after the onset of Silence's post-traumatic disorder. It is crucial to observe, however, that this occasion is a replay of an earlier scene before the attack, when her aunt berates Silence for talking to David rather than attending to domestic chores. Then, too, without argument Silence obediently "pulled a spinning-wheel before the fire and fell to work" (13).

On both occasions Silence conforms to expectations, although her potential for a different response is also suggested in the two spinning wheel scenes. Silence holds "up her head like a queen" (12) and works "with a certain dignity" (40). Such hints of resistance suggest that Silence possesses a latent capacity for the same personal sovereignty evident in Goody Crane's attitude toward social expectations based on past patterns of female behavior. Goody Crane "leer[s] up ... undauntedly" (30) to criticism, an action more resistant than but also certainly akin to rebuked Silence's holding her head like a queen. A shared sensibility of independence-one manifest, the other latent-accounts for the "strange likeness between" Goody Crane and Silence.

The diptych of the spinning wheel scenes also provides insight into the meaning of Silence's trance-like condition. It is significant that both before and after her affliction, little has changed in Silence's experience at home. This detail suggests, in the shadow narrative, that the time after the impairment of her wits is like the time before. In the domestic romance David's return should heal Silence. That it does not, that Goody Crane rather than David effects the cure, intimates that something more than David's absence accounts for Silence's temporary loss of her wits. In the shadow tale Silence suffers a temporary attenuation of her wits not because of the captivity of David but because of the captivity of her autonomy. Her vocalization of desire in calling for her fiance represents a potential power as yet spellbound in her. That the efficacy of this power is as arrested before the trauma as it is afterward is a deeper implication of the dual spinning wheel scenes where Silence conforms to her aunt's demands as if hypnotized.

The shadow tale implicitly critiques the communal (domestic romance) perception of Silence's loss of wits as an illness. Is not her traumatic condition in effect an extreme version of Eunice Bishop's communal ideal of "witless," trance-like female submission? A clue to such an interrogation emerges in the fact that the community is disturbed less by Silence's hypnotic behavior than by her compulsive vocalization: "people heard her and sighed and shuddered" (47). The witch-like aberrant expression of Silence's voice, recalling Goody Crane's equally undisciplinable speech, is the chief cause of the community's concern over Silence's condition.

In "Silence" resistant female vocalization represents the autonomous expression of the witch-like power of female desire. Goody Crane enables Silence to find her voice, to break free of a trance-like existence. The process commences when Goody Crane tells Silence that David is alive in Canada (32) and "will come back over the north meadow" (35). As a result of Goody Crane's counsel, "there was never a day nor a night that Silence called not over the north meadow" (47). Silence's determined vocalization expresses her personal desire, as yet spellbound. After Goody Crane's prediction Silence becomes a divided woman. She physically complies with the demands of her social milieu, but she mentally attends to the claims of her own desire: "She paid no heed, for she was not there" (36). From within her trance-like state, representing women's social situation, emerges Silence's socially disturbing voice. Silence's insistent/resistant voice allies her to Goody Crane, her surrogate mother, even more than does the mere likeness between their eyes. All that is needed is a further "maternal" intervention by Goody Crane. Goody Crane's midwifery (as it were) in the moonlight facilitates the birth of Silence's desire from a spellbound potentiality to a liberated actuality.

The presentation of Silence calling over the meadow is reproduced in the frontispiece of Silence and Other Stories, which reprints the original magazine illustration. It is a particularly dramatic moment:

"David!" she called. "David! David! David!" The north wind bore down upon her, shrieking with a wild fury like a savage of the air; the dry branches of a small tree near her struck her in the face. "David!" she called again. "David! David!" She swelled out her white throat like a bird, and her voice was shrill and sweet and far-reaching." (38) This scene dominates the remainder of the story. In fact, the story concludes with the reunion of the lovers at this very site of Silence's vocalized yearning.

This scene recalls a powerful episode in Wuthering Heights, in which Catherine Earnshaw calls in vain for Heathcliff in the windy moors. In Bronte's novel Catherine confesses to her housemaid, Ellen Dean, that she loves Heathcliff but will not marry him because he is an uncouth, penniless orphan. Heathcliff, who feels as passionately about Catherine as she does about him, overhears this conversation and furiously runs off into the stormy moors, where he disappears. Catherine, "in a state of agitation" and heedless of "the growling thunder, and the great drops," calls at intervals, "crying outright" into the night (76). Cold and wet, Catherine falls into a feverish delirium, from which she recovers physically but not emotionally. From this point onward, disaster awaits the separated lovers. Even after their death, villagers claim to hear their restless spirits roaming the moors.

It is unlikely that the meadow scene in "Silence" is an accidental or casual allusion to this famous passage in Wuthering Heights. Within three years after the periodical version of "Silence," Freeman published a novel evidently influenced by Emily Bronte's book (Glasser 129-31), and within three years after the collection version of "Silence," Freeman explicitly lavished extraordinary praise on Wuthering Heights as "an unflinching masterpiece" (67). One of Freeman's attractions to Wuthering Heights, it has been suggested (Westbrook 89), is Bronte's fearlessness in presenting her story, in contrast to Freeman's personal sense of the inhibiting restraints imposed on her by the expectations of her audience. In this sense, the allusion to Wuthering Heights may be read as a homage to Bronte. However, since the appropriated scene dominates the second half of Freeman's story, something more than a mere testament seems to be implied.

Read in light of the domestic romance formula in "Silence," the allusion to Wuthering Heights possibly suggests that the story of Silence Hoit revises the story of Catherine Earnshaw. In contrast to Catherine, Silence succeeds in uniting with her lover, an orphan (like Heathcliff). Happiness, not misery, is the destiny of Silence and David Walcott. This reading is not very satisfying, however, because Freeman's account of Silence's experience pales considerably in comparison to Bronte's impassioned account of Catherine's experience. Instead of pointing to "Silence" as a revision of Wu thering Heights, the echo of the famous scene of Catherine calling for Heathcliff more likely draws attention to itself. It is just too powerful, too "stormy" an allusion to function well at the level of the domestic romance narrative in "Silence." This allusion potentially causes the reader to hesitate or sense some disjunctiveness at this point in the story. The allusion to Wuthering Heights, like the earlier mention of a strange likeness between Silence and Goody Crane, is a shard from some other narrative barely glimpsed in the shadows of the conventional story.

Read in terms of this phantom narrative, the reference to Wuthering Heights suggests another revision in Freeman's short story. The shadow tale suggests that Silence is joined to her lover in the domestic romance specifically because she does not betray her desire. In contrast to Catherine's decision not to marry Heathcliff despite being in love with him, Silence gives full expression to her desire regardless of social consequences. Silence's heedless determination is like Goody Crane's resolution to risk her life in order to save her surrogate daughter. Silence, who pays "no heed" and is "not there," also revises wild and undisciplined Catherine, who (in Freeman's phrasing) is caught "in a whirlpool of emotion" (69). Silence, as mentored by Goody Crane, fulfills Catherine's thwarted desire.

Wuthering Heights struck its Victorian reviewers as coarse, vulgar, even repulsive in its indecorous account of tempestuous passions appa rently presented without a moral. Freeman likewise acknowledges that Bronte's "great work" indeed "offends and repels" (69). It is precisely this received history of Bronte's novel that would have prevented the allusion to Wuthering Heights from functioning comfortably in "Silence" as a mere tribute. Freeman's contemporaries who recognized the allusion would potentially have been arrested by it, their attention at least momentarily diverted from the domestic romance plot. There was even some risk on Freeman's part of being charged of plagiarism by readers disturbed by the allusion.

As a feature of the shadow tale, however, the allusive scene of Silence calling for David in a meadow potentially functions like Goody Crane. It, too, is a sudden "shadow" cloaking some secret (occult-like) meaning in the "daylight" of what appears to be a conventional historical or domestic romance.

The same secret about female desire informs another allusion in "Silence." Appearing at the end of the short story, this peculiar episode completes a structural triad of pieces from the shadow narrative that includes, first, the similarity between Goody Crane and Silence, and then the allusion to Wuthering Heights. The third incident occurs when Goody Crane facilitates Silence's recognition of David by having him appear in the moonlight while wearing a sheep skin over his shoulders. Goody Crane's reasons for this strategy are not revealed, nor is the tactic prepared for by any preceding feature in the domestic romance. Why this arrangement should succeed is never indicated. At best, when the "white fleece of a sheep thrown over [David's] back [catches] the moonlight" (53), we may suspect that somehow the visual effect attracts Silence's eye. But, even so, why would Silence's attention be distracted by a sheep? And why would this attention make any difference? Nothing in the domestic romance explains why Goody Crane's ruse works. Accordingly, it would not be surprising if a reader finally suspected that the detail is meant merely as an indication of witchcraft and finally is unimportant in itself, perhaps only introduced to conclude the story.

Nevertheless, the particulars of the scene seem significant, as if elements of some ritual beyond witchery are involved. This final episode involving the sheep skin is affiliated with the other two odd narrative features in the short story. Silence's likeness to Goody Crane and Freeman's revision of Catherine Earnshaw lead to this occasion when an alleged medicinal witch cures Silence of a malaise a condition akin to blindness-associated with the suppression of female desire.

This concluding incident seems to re-present an Old Testament event recorded in Chapter 27 of Genesis. This may at first seem an odd proposition. It is well known that Freeman, who rarely quotes Scripture in her work, was generally skeptical about religion. Her fiction nonetheless reflects the influence of the Bible on New England culture. Freeman's writings, it has been argued, include a new sort of Calvinism in which women assert an independent authority based on an inward revelation (Razzari 227). Her work has also been said to feature undeclared biblical themes, especially concerning judgment, that inform Freeman's recovery of female history (Morey 759). "Silence" provides an instance of a specific and clever revision of Scripture.

In Genesis aged Isaac, who is virtually blind, wishes to bless his son Esau. His wife Rebekah prefers Jacob, and she conspires with him to trick her husband into giving her younger son the blessing intended for the older twin brother. As the primary means of deception devised by his mother, Jacob dons goat skins on his hands, neck, and shoulders to simulate Esau's hairiness. Touching these skins convinces Isaac that Jacob is Esau, and he gives Jacob the irrevocable blessing that positions him at the head of the family. The brothers are now divided, and Jacob flees for his life. A reconciliation between the brothers will occur many years later.

Goody Crane, like Rebekah, conspires with David to secure Silence's favor. In her virtual blindness, Silence, like Isaac, is deceived by donned animal skins. The ruse succeeds, albeit with a significant difference from the Old Testament version. David receives Silence's blessing, as it were, but a union rather than a division results with the restoration of Silence's vision. The union of the lovers is the point of the domestic romance, whereas the realization of Silence's voice (desire) after the restoration of Silence's vision (health) is the point of the shadow tale. Like Rebekah in the scriptural account, Goody Crane exerts a powerful female agency in the shadow tale. From the likeness of her eyes to Silence's, through her initiation of Silence's watch over the meadow, to her attainment of Silence's restoration with the sheep skin, Goody Crane wields a witchlike power on behalf of Silence, her surrogate daughter.

Freeman's story revises the Old Testament story not only by emphasizing a union but also by reading a shadow tale in the biblical story. In the shadows of the official story about patriarchal succession is an indirect account of Rebekah's power. Expressing her desire, Rebekah resists her patriarchal husband's will, persuades her reluctant son to deceive his father, and tears a family asunder. So, finally, if the sheepskin allusion to Esau and Jacob provides a structural feature of the shadow tale in "Silence," this phantom narrative in turn provides a hermeneutic, a newer testament, for rereading that biblical story in terms of the might of expressed (vocalized) female desire. In this suggestion Freeman anticipates a late twentieth-century feminist understanding of Rebekah (Exum 65-66). It would seem, moreover, that Goody Crane, as a revised version of Rebekah, is as good at applying scriptural learning as she is thought to be in applying occult knowledge.

Goody Crane and her protege are gifted with precognition, and this trait is mirrored in Freeman's own narrative. The story ends with an intimated prediction: David and Silence hold each other "as if they ... might reappear hundreds of spring-times hence" (54). At this point the domestic romance and the shadow tale meet. Here the reunion of the lovers and the actualization of female desire share the same narrative space. This narrative juncture implies more than the mysterious endurance of love; it also implies the future emergence of female potentiality from the shadows of convention. As represented by reactions to Silence's voice in the short story, the prospect of such an actualization of female power makes adults sigh and shudder. The children, however, "had no fear of her": "They [the children] eyed with a mixture of wonder and admiration Silence's beautiful bewildered face.... Many a time when Silence called to David from the terrace of the north meadow, some of the little village maids in their homespun pinafores would join her and call with her" (42). These young women are the future, Freeman predicts. They, like Silence, will enjoy "far-reaching" voices (38) in "hundreds of spring-times hence," when being as outspoken as a witch will be normal rather than aberrant for women. At its conclusion "Silence" forecasts the eventual realization, the triumph, of the autonomous expression of the witch-like power of female desire. This prediction is the message of the shadow tale in "Silence," a narrative that imitates Goody Crane Silence's enabling surrogate mother of "strange likeness"-by "slid[ing] in[to the text] like a swift black shadow out of the daylight" of a conventional romance (30).

[Author Affiliation]

WILLIAM J. SCHEICK is the J. R. Millikan Centennial Professor of American Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. His recent books include Fictional Structure and Ethics: The Turn-of-the-Century English Novel and The Ethos of Romance at the Turn of the Century. He has also edited two collections of short fiction by Freeman's southern contemporary Alice Maude Ewell.