The mood of “A New England Nun” shifts from peaceful to uneasy and back to peaceful as Louisa moves from enjoying her simple life of solitude to feeling threatened by the potential of marriage to Joe to ultimately finding peace after breaking off their engagement. The opening paragraph establishes the calm, easeful mood of the beginning of the story:
It was late in the afternoon, and the light was waning […] Somewhere in the distance cows were lowing and a little bell was tinkling; now and then a farm-wagon tilted by, and the dust flew; some blue-shirted laborers with shovels over their shoulders plodded past; little swarms of flies were dancing up and down before the peoples’ faces in the soft air. There seemed to be a gentle stir arising over everything for the mere sake of subsidence—a very premonition of rest and hush and night.
The descriptions here—such as “the light was waning,” “a little bell was tinkling,” and “little swarms of flies were dancing up and down […] in the soft air”—all contribute to a calm and peaceful mood. All of these descriptions impart a sense of the world being gentle and free of stress. The final line of the passage even more directly communicates the mood through its description of the “rest and hush and night" palpable in the scene. Despite the fact that readers have not yet been introduced to Louisa, the restful mood here prepares them for the similarly restful and peaceful rhythm of Louisa’s everyday life.
When Louisa’s fiancé Joe enters the picture, the mood becomes more awkward and tense, as seen in the following passage when Joe comes over to Louisa’s home:
She placed a chair for him, and they sat facing each other, with the table between them. He sat bolt-upright, toeing out his heavy feet squarely, glancing with a good-humored uneasiness around the room. She sat gently erect, folding her slender hands in her white-linen lap.
“Been a pleasant day,” remarked Dagget.
“Real pleasant,” Louisa assented, softly.
Freeman’s descriptions of Joe sitting “bolt-upright” and “glancing with a good-humored uneasiness around the room” establishes that this is an uncomfortable moment—though he has promised Louisa that they will get married one day, he clearly does not want to be spending this kind of alone time with her. That Louisa also “sat gently erect” with folded hands shows a subtler, yet still perceptible, level of unease on her part. Ultimately, this tense mood shifts back into a peaceful state after the two break off their engagement and Louisa can happily live her life as a “New England nun.”
