Two Friends and a New England Nun

After listening in class how others read each of the stories by Freeman, I kept thinking of my initial thoughts after reading “Two Friends” and “A New England Nun”. After reading “A New England Nun,” I thought, “Good for you, Louisa!” in terms of stumbling across the perfect opportunity and reason to end her engagement because she was happier being alone. She had settled into a way of life that was comfortable to her and to marry Joe would have been a huge disruption because he had been gone for so long and I don’t blame her for not wanting to disrupt her life; she is basically settling to marry a stranger because he has been gone for fourteen years. I wouldn’t want to marry someone that had been gone that long either. I had very similar thoughts after reading “Two Friends”. I didn’t see any sexual parallels between Abby and Sarah until they were brought up in class. I saw them as two friends who were each others family living together and being perfectly happy living without men in their lives. When the concept of a Boston marriage also came up in class and how this is a great example of it, I thought how many women have been in the same situation if they’ve ever lived with a roommate. I have lived with roommates for years and never thought of it as a marriage until now. I am sharing household responsibilities and splitting bills with another person and married people do the same so while I understand it, I think the concept of a Boston marriage is irrelevant now a days. I think it was relevant and could be seen as something out of the norm in the times that this was written but because it is such a common occurrence now, anyone that’s told they are in a Boston marriage would chuckle the way I did when I really thought about it.