SOURCE: Levy, Babette May. “Mutations of New England Local Color.” New England Quarterly XIX, no. 3 (September 1946): 345-57.

In the following excerpt, Levy argues that the criticism present in Cooke's writing is targeted towards ungrateful, affluent New Englanders.

Rose Terry Cooke, born in 1827, … came of a well-to-do family that included in the immediately preceding generations a congressman, a bank president, and a ship builder. She taught school and reared her dead sister's family before she married, in 1873, Rollin Hillyer Cooke, an iron manufacturer and private banker. Mrs. Cooke's stories and sketches had been appearing in various magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, since the late 1850's; in these later years of happiness, particularly in the 1880's, much of her work came out in book-form. Despite her background, Mrs. Cooke knew and did not hesitate to portray the more distressing side of life in and near Connecticut factory towns. She admitted...