SOURCE: Westbrook, Perry D. “Willfulness and Wrongheadedness: The Hill People of Rose Terry Cooke,” in Acres of Flint: Sarah Orne Jewett and Her Contemporaries, revised edition, pp. 78-85. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981.

In the following essay, Westbrook discusses the comic and tragic characters created by Cooke. Where other New England writers saw the hardships of farm life resulting in tough, self-reliant individuals, Cooke believed the harsh conditions destroyed the women, both mentally and physically, and turned the men into hardened bullies.

And how, we ask, would New England's rocky soil and icy hills have been made mines of wealth unless there had been human beings born to oppose, delighting to combat and wrestle, and with an unconquerable power of will.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People¹

1. Zeph Higgins

One of the most interesting and vivid characters that Harriet Beecher Stowe created is the farmer Zeph Higgins in Poganuc People...