A New England Nun

I thought the short story, "A New England Nun", was an atypical story about the new woman. It was almost as if the main character accidentally fell into the role of being independent. Even despite the fact that Louisa became independent at the end, she steadily demonstrated her ability to survive "on her own" without Joe.  I thought this story was interesting because it described and centered around the emotional side of the woman (what usually characterized a woman was her emotions or "hypersensitivity") while also elaborating on how the woman could survive as an individual. The ending seemed to be optimistic; Louisa was probably better off without Joe than she would've been with him. She seemingly demonstrated that she could be independent without him; moreover, she sometimes seemed unaffected by his presence. I somewhat shocked me when I found out Joe and Louisa were "courting" near the beginning, because she seemed so preoccupied with keeping every other aspect of her life "perfect". Those were areas Joe was not involved in, and those were the areas of Louisa's life that seemed more, if not most, important.