Mary Freeman’s short story, A New England Nun is relatable in a few aspects. Louisa Ellis is a woman who likes to be in charge and seems to have OCD (Obsession Compulsive Disorder). As someone who has OCD I found it very interesting to read about another individual’s behavior and be able to connect/relate to it 100%. While reading this piece I understood where she was coming from in many different aspects. She likes everything to be in a certain order and is disturbed when things are otherwise. For example, when Joe Dagget steps foot into her home, much to his belief he seems to cause a lot of disturbance. While they were at a table he “began fingering the books on the table.” “He took them up one after the other and opened them; then laid…show more content… That was the way they had been arranged in the first place.” While Dagget did not understand why putting the books back in order was a big deal, Louisa begged to differ. Organization and control revolve around the life of an individual who has OCD and in order for the individual to be content, everything must be exactly the way that he/she wants it to be. Then when exiting the home, Dagget “stumbled over a rug, and trying to recover himself, hit Louisa’s work basket on the table, and knocked it on the floor.” This did not make Louisa too happy. Dagget looks up at her as if he knew what he did caused some disturbance to her order, and she tells him “Nevermind,” “I’ll pick them up after you’re gone.” Freeman poses the idea that “Either she was a little disturbed, or his nervousness affected her, and made her seem constrained in her effort to reassure him” but from the album incident we can infer that there is no sense of reassuring him here; if you ask me, she seemed very irritated and over his behavior in her home thus far. This assumption is based solely on my…show more content… Marrying him would mean that she would be living in “a large house to care for; there would be company to entertain; there would be Joe’s rigorous and feeble old mother to wait upon; and it would be contrary to all thrifty village traditions for her to keep more than one servant.” This all meant that Louisa would have to adapt to a new lifestyle with numerous people being in the house with their own ways of living. While she waited fifteen years to get married to Dagget, upon his arrival she could not come to grips with being with him for the rest of their lives. In regards to their marriage “she had fallen into a way of placing it so far in the future that it was almost equal to placing it over the boundaries of another life.” While he was her first love, “she had lived so long in one way that she shrank from making change.” Louisa wanted everything her way and it unfortunately costed her the relationship she had with Dagget. Being in control of your own life, down to the cleanliness of a rug is a behavior that takes some getting used to, but with the right self-understanding, living life with another individual is possible. The idea that your way is not the only way is learned throughout time, unfortunately Louisa was unable to break that mindset. Her inability to let go and adapt new ways of living with a significant other severed her ties to someone who once meant so
