Question

In an essay of at least 150 words, explain how the excerpt from "The Revolt of 'Mother'" uses local color

Answer 1

The local color used by the author is shown in the following lines

The spring air, full of the smell of growing grass and unseen blossoms, came in their faces.

He came gaping, dropping little blots of foam from the brimming pails. . . . There were brown-bread and baked beans and a custard pie. . . .

She had on a clean calico. . .

Step-by-step explanation:

With the use of Alliteration (Repetition of a consonant sound) the author describes the setting which takes place on a farm in rural New England in the spring and summer of a year in the late nineteenth century.

Because Freeman's stories are primarily about New Englanders and the way they live, they are considered part of the local-color movement in American literature. A typical local-color writer focused on a particular region, its customs and traditions, its dialect, and so on. Harper's Bazaar published “The Revolt of 'Mother'" in its issue of September 1890.

Answer 2

This book was published in the year of 1891. It was written by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, the story called "The Revolt of 'Mother" describes a part in the life of a woman living in the rural areas of New England. It is written from Sarah Penn point of view. This woman is having troubles with her husband's decision of building a new barn instead of a new home.

It is considered that this book depicts very well how the life of the lower-class people was like by those years; something that the author had demonstrated previously, in other of her works. The author achieves the mentioned effect by the use of local color to describe society roles of that time. In other words, it is the use of literary regionalisms which focuses on describing the custom of the people living in that specific region, in this case New England.