“A New England Nun” is set in rural New England in the late 1800s. Freeman’s story is a work of Regionalist literature, meaning that the setting is an extremely important part of the story and she takes pains to represent New England in a realistic way. This comes across in her rich descriptions of the New England landscape in the story, like the following:
About nine o’clock Louisa strolled down the road a little way. There were harvest-fields on either hand, bordered by low stone walls. Luxuriant clumps of bushes grew beside the wall, and trees—wild cherry and old apple-trees—at intervals.
Harvest-fields, “low stone walls,” cherry trees, and apple trees all firmly establish that this story is set in the countryside of New England. In the detailed way in which Freeman captures the natural world, the setting almost becomes another character in the story.
Also important to the setting of the story is the fact that Freeman wrote it at a critical time in women’s history. Though women in the United States would not get the right to vote until 1920, suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the National American Woman Suffrage Association were working tirelessly (and publicly) for voting rights for all. Though the character Louisa is not a political activist in “A New England Nun,” she is challenging gender norms by choosing a life of solitude over marriage.
Despite the fact that “A New England Nun” is centered on the story of a single woman who is able to afford living alone without working, the story makes it clear that this is not a story about the wealthy elite. The narrator states directly that Louisa is “no richer or better bred” than her working-class neighbors, implying that she likely inherited money from her family members’ deaths. This is important because it establishes that Louisa does not come from a social class in which it is typical for women to enjoy leisure at home drinking tea from fancy china sets—these are decisions she made for herself because she appreciates a life of solitude and simple indulgences.
