SOURCE: “The Haunting Will: The Ghost Stories of Mary Wilkins Freeman,” in Colby Library Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4, December, 1985, pp. 208–20.

In the following essay, Oaks analyzes Freeman's ghost stories, maintaining that they portray the negative consequences possible when individual will overrides social conventions.

Mary Wilkins Freeman's ghost stories do not have a good critical reputation. Critics use the ghost stories to illustrate the decline in the quality of Freeman's fiction after her 1902 marriage. Westbrook summarizes this stance in the following statement:

As early as 1903 the deterioration in … Freeman's art had become catastrophically noticeable in a volume of ghost stories, The Wind in the Rose-Bush and Other Tales of the Supernatural. Deficient in suspense and atmosphere, these tales rely on the most ludicrous devices for their interest. … With the exception of an occasional flash of … Freeman's old flair for presenting the distortion of village characters … these stories are without merit...