Attempted Secrecy in "Old Woman Magoun"

The theme of secrecy also plays a significant role in Freeman's "Old Woman Magoun." At the very beginning of the story, Freeman plants seeds of secrecy by relating the rather cloudy history of Lily’s mother. The story has circulated “…that Lily’s mother…had been married at sixteen” (418), but Freeman is careful to qualify that it is Old Woman Magoun who has insisted upon the truth of the story. Thus the true nature of the events surrounding Lily’s birth isn’t as secret as Old Woman Magoun would like them to be. Her vehement insistence that her daughter was, indeed, married lends suspicion to her claim. The townspeople themselves doubted the truth of the story: people were already spreading “rumors” (418).

This theme of trying too hard to conceal secrets that are actually quite obvious runs throughout the rest of the piece. Lily’s death at the hands of Old Woman Magoun is anything but surprising. Old Woman Magoun’s declaration that “‘She wouldn’t hurt you for nothin’, except it was to save your life, or somethin’ like that’” (425) is the first clue that she is going to harm Lily. I think that we as readers have been trained to immediately distrust statements that begin with something like “I would never.” As if to further erase our doubt, Freeman describes the way in which Old Woman Magoun spoke: “She spoke with an undertone of tremendous meaning which the girl was too childish to grasp” (425). Maybe Lily is “too childish” to understand, but the readers probably feel as if they are being hit over the head with excessive foreshadowing. It is as if Freeman wants the readers to know exactly what Old Woman Magoun is planning, but I’m not sure why.

It seems that Old Woman Magoun does succeed in concealing how, exactly, Lily dies. Nobody saw Lily eat the nightshade berries, but at least a few people believe that it was the “milk and sour apples” (428) that caused Lily’s illness. And Old Woman Magoun’s grief is certainly believable: she “shook with her terrible sobs” (428), possibly because she actually is terribly sad about her granddaughter’s imminent death. The fact that she carries around “Lily’ s old rag doll” (429) probably lends credence to her innocent grief: clinging to some reminder of a dead grandchild is probably something a crazily grief-stricken grandparent would do. Rather than ending with the revelation of a secret, as “A New England Nun” and “Two Friends” do, “Old Woman Magoun” ends with the concealment of a secret. Readers are left with the image of a stubborn elderly woman with a tattered doll and a deadly secret that she will carry for the rest of her life.