The tone of “A New England Nun” is a conflicted one. Though the narrator is third-person omniscient, they stay fairly close to Louisa’s experience, and the tone therefore changes depending on if Louisa is joyful (when alone in her home that she loves) or tense (when she is with Joe, overhearing him with Lily, or thinking about him).
The following passage demonstrates how the story’s tone can change within a single paragraph:
Louisa had almost the enthusiasm of an artist over the mere order and cleanliness of her solitary home. She had throbs of genuine triumph at the sight of the window-panes which she had polished until they shone like jewels. She gloated gently over her orderly bureau-drawers, with their exquisitely folded contents redolent with lavender and sweet clover and very purity […] She had visions, so startling that she half repudiated them as indelicate, of coarse masculine belongings strewn about in endless litter; of dust and disorder arising necessarily from a coarse masculine presence in the midst of all this delicate harmony.
This passage begins with Louisa experiencing “the enthusiasm of an artist” over the maintenance of her tidy home. The tone is clearly a passionate and excited one as the narrator describes how Louisa “had throbs of genuine triumph” at the sight of her clean windows and the orderly contents of her dresser drawers “redolent with lavender and sweet clover and very purity.”
The tone then abruptly changes as Louisa thinks about what would happen to her home if she were to marry Joe—suddenly she has “startling” and “indelicate” visions of “dust and disorder” and “coarse masculine belongings strewn about in endless litter” disrupting the “delicate harmony” of her home. The tone becomes frustrated and bereaved, matching the angst the Louisa feels about potentially sharing this space that is hers and hers alone. The shift in tone signals how deeply Louisa does not want to fulfill the gender roles expected of her—specifically, getting married to a man and moving in with him.
