SOURCE: Martin, Jay. “Rose Terry Cooke,” in Harvests of Change: American Literature 1865-1914, pp. 139-42. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967.

In the following essay, Martin examines Cooke's regional short stories, claiming that her characterizations of New England farmers and their wives constitute her best work.

Rose Terry Cooke had attended the Hartford Female Seminary, which Catherine Beecher, Harriet's sister, founded and organized on the principles she had derived from her conversion to a personal religion based on love rather than sin. There Miss Terry was influenced by the Rev. John Pierce Brace, who had been Harriet's instructor at Litchfield Academy and appears as Jonathan Rossiter in Oldtown Folks. Like Mrs. Stowe, she was, as Harriet Prescott Spofford said, “of undoubted and undiluted Puritan blood, which is to be found nowhere bluer than in Connecticut.” Like Harriet, too, her writing is governed largely by the ebb and flow of emotions...