New England Nun- Being Single

In class we discussed how Country of the Pointed Firs was like "reality literature" and how it was possibly kind of groundbreaking for that type of story to even be written.  I think those ideas can be applied to "The New England Nun."  It is really kind of radical for a story to describe single life for a woman so positively.  There is a complete tone shift in the story when Joe Dagget enters Louisa's house.  The first few pages are peaceful and prim and when Joe walks in he is changing around the order of the books, knocking over the sewing supplies, and getting the floors all dirty.  Louisa's single-ness and is even liked to a queen in a palace, "She felt like a queen who, after fearing lest her domain be wrestled away from her, sees it firmly insured in her possession" (359).  The line is one of the most important in the story and really displays single life as something wonderful and worth holding on to.  This story challenges the ideas that a woman is incomplete until she is married by showing a fulfilling and precious single lifestyle.