The broader social issue depicted in the story is the powerlessness of women in a patriarchal, rural society. Sarah Penn is a strong woman who works very hard and is an excellent housewife. However, her house is shabby, and she can't get her husband, Adoniram, who controls the purse strings, to build her a new house. Instead, he builds another bigger-and-better barn.
Social realism comes to play in the way Sarah approaches Adoniram about the house; she is not demanding but is depicted rather as a good Christian woman who asks for very little (who wouldn't bother him about a house if it weren't imperative). She has Adoniram look at her daughter, Nanny's, tiny bedroom and asks if there is not something that can be done. She tries very hard to frame her request as a request, not a demand, and to place it within the context of the reward owed to a dutiful, submissive, God-fearing wife.
When that doesn't work, she acts a trickster, another realistic move for a person in a subaltern position. People without power often have to think creatively and resort to stratagems to get their needs met. (A good example would be Br'er Rabbit, who used trickery to get free.) In Sarah's case, she takes advantage of her husband's absence to turn the new barn into a house. Her neighbors accuse her of being "lawless and rebellious," but her scheme finally convinces her husband that she needs a better place to live.
Freeman is realistic in showing that Sarah is not treated as an equal by her husband and forced to use her wits to thrive. Social realism also shines through the rural dialect the characters use. For example, at the end of the story, Adoniram says to Sarah:
I hadn't no idee you was so set on't as all this comes to.
The Penn household is clearly very traditional in the sense that the husband handles affairs outside the house and the wife handles the affairs inside. When Sarah continues to ask her husband why he has men digging out in the field, Adoniram tells her, "'I wish you'd go into the house, mother, an' 'tend, to your own affairs.'" However, her apparent "meekness" appears to have "been the result of her own will, never of the will of another." When Adoniram knows that his wife will be upset with his answers to her questions regarding the new barn he's planning to build rather than a new house for her, he stops answering them.
We see Sarah continuing to engage in typical wifely duties: cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, and so on. She even defends her husband's choices when their daughter begins to criticize them:
However deep a resentment she might be forced to hold against her husband, she would never fail in sedulous attention to his wants.
All of these descriptions fall into the category of social realism. There is no romanticizing of the marriage, and Sarah certainly doesn't present their marriage as one that has been full of big gestures on Adoniram's part.
However, she believes it is God's "providence" that her brother wrote to Adoniram, calling him away from home just as this moment, and she takes full advantage of this "'Unsolicited opportunit[y]'" presented by "'the Lord.'" The narrator credits Sarah Penn for her "genius and audacity of bravery" in moving all her household goods to the new barn while Adoniram is away. As she tells the minister, she believes what she's doing is right, and this gives her the strength needed to "revolt" against her husband and the patriarchal society he stands for.
"The Revolt of 'Mother'" depicts the socioeconomic conditions of rural New England and is realistic in its description of a lower-class farmer's life. The short story is reminiscent of John Steinbeck's work depicting Depression-era California. Besides the vivid description of economic hardships in rural America, the story also illustrates the hardships that women faced in a patriarchal culture.
The husband is essentially the antagonist of the story. His character represents authoritarianism, patriarchal traditions in American culture, and domestic issues seen in many households throughout the country. Sarah Penn, the wife, is initially characterized as a submissive and obedient spouse. However, her husband's extremely stubborn ways and the dangerous economic situation they are in forces her to "rebel."
In essence, she not only represents feminist theories about contemporary gender roles in America, she also personifies political and cultural revolutions. Even the title of the story has the world "revolt" in it, which is a hint that Sarah symbolizes direct-action insurrection in a revolutionary movement, and her husband symbolizes totalitarianism or monarchism.
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