Cacoethes Scribendi/ Catharine Maria Sedgwick
Truly this is not a story that addresses human struggle or social injustice. Sedgwick mentioned nothing about abolition, which was quite an issue at that time. She wrote a little bit about women's effort in asserting their subjectivity through writing but eventually she confirmed the conventional value of family and marriage in this story, lacking the edge manifested in works like Virginia Woolf's.
However, it is still a lovely story, revealing the tranquil side of rural life that had not been tainted with the bustle of industrialism yet. What Sedgwick has done is, as is written Norton introduction, recording "ways of life already gone or rapidly disappearing from New England"(460). But the peculiar aspect she presents here is a delightful one. Undoubtedly, reading this story will have you smile warmly in a sunny morning, when everything appears to be brighter under the light of hopefulness.