Her
short stories are her most artistic work, especially those in the two
volumes, _A New England Nun_, and _Silence and Other Tales_; but she can
also tell a long story well, as is shown in _Pembroke_, which combines at
their best all her qualities as a novelist.
She is distinctly a realist of Howells's school, presenting the daily
rounds of the life which she knew intimately, and making complete stories
of such meager material as the subterfuges which two poor but proud sisters
practiced in order to make one black silk dress, owned in partnership,
appear as if each really possessed "a gala dress." She takes stolid,
practical characters, who have seemingly nothing attractive in their
composition, and by her sympathetic treatment causes them to appeal
strongly to human hearts. She discovers heroic qualities in apparently
commonplace homes and families, and finds humorous or pathetic
possibilities in men and women whom most writers would consider very
unpromising. Miss Wilkins knows that in rural New England romantic things
do happen, tragedies do occur, and heroes and heroines do appear in
unexpected quarters to meet emergencies, and she occasionally transfers
such events to her pages, thereby enlivening them without sacrificing the
reality of her pictures.
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