The Revolt of Mary Isabel

"The Revolt of Mary Isabel" is a short story by Lucy Maud Montgomery that explores themes of individuality, freedom, and the struggles of a young girl against societal expectations. The narrative centers around Mary Isabel, a girl who feels stifled by the conventional norms imposed on her by her family and community. As she navigates her feelings of rebellion and desires for autonomy, the story delves into the conflicts between personal aspirations and the roles assigned to women in her era. Montgomery's characteristic lyrical prose highlights the emotional depth of Mary Isabel's journey toward self-discovery and empowerment.

• Short story

								
"For a woman of forty, Mary Isabel, you have the least sense of any
person I have ever known," said Louisa Irving.

Louisa had said something similar in spirit to Mary Isabel almost
every day of her life. Mary Isabel had never resented it, even when it
hurt her bitterly. Everybody in Latimer knew that Louisa Irving ruled
her meek little sister with a rod of iron and wondered why Mary Isabel
never rebelled. It simply never occurred to Mary Isabel to do so; all
her life she had given in to Louisa and the thought of refusing
obedience to her sister's Mede-and-Persian decrees never crossed her
mind. Mary Isabel had only one secret from Louisa and she lived in
daily dread that Louisa would discover it. It was a very harmless
little secret, but Mary Isabel felt rightly sure that Louisa would not
tolerate it for a moment.

They were sitting together in the dim living room of their quaint old
cottage down by the shore. The window was open and the sea-breeze blew
in, stirring the prim white curtains fitfully, and ruffling the little
rings of dark hair on Mary Isabel's forehead--rings which always
annoyed Louisa. She thought Mary Isabel ought to brush them straight
back, and Mary Isabel did so faithfully a dozen times a day; and in
ten minutes they crept down again, kinking defiance to Louisa, who
might make Mary Isabel submit to her in all things but had no power
over naturally curly hair. Louisa had never had any trouble with her
own hair; it was straight and sleek and mouse-coloured--what there was
of it.

Mary Isabel's face was flushed and her wood-brown eyes looked grieved
and pleading. Mary Isabel was still pretty, and vanity is the last
thing to desert a properly constructed woman.

"I can't wear a bonnet yet, Louisa," she protested. "Bonnets have gone
out for everybody except really old ladies. I want a hat: one of
those pretty, floppy ones with pale blue forget-me-nots."

Then it was that Louisa made the remark quoted above.

"I wore a bonnet before I was forty," she went on ruthlessly, "and so
should every decent woman. It is absurd to be thinking so much of
dress at your age, Mary Isabel. I don't know what sort of a way you'd
bedizen yourself out if I'd let you, I'm sure. It's fortunate you have
somebody to keep you from making a fool of yourself. I'm going to town
tomorrow and I'll pick you out a suitable black bonnet. You'd look
nice starring round in leghorn and forget-me-nots, now, wouldn't you?"

Mary Isabel privately thought she would, but she gave in, of course,
although she did hate bitterly that unbought, unescapable bonnet.

"Well, do as you think best, Louisa," she said with a sigh. "I suppose
it doesn't matter much. Nobody cares how I look anyhow. But can't I go
to town with you? I want to pick out my new silk."

"I'm as good a judge of black silk as you," said Louisa shortly. "It
isn't safe to leave the house alone."

"But I don't want a black silk," cried Mary Isabel. "I've worn black
so long; both my silk dresses have been black. I want a pretty
silver-grey, something like Mrs. Chester Ford's."

"Did anyone ever hear such nonsense?" Louisa wanted to know, in
genuine amazement. "Silver-grey silk is the most unserviceable thing
in the world. There's nothing like black for wear and real elegance.
No, no, Mary Isabel, don't be foolish. You must let me choose for you;
you know you never had any judgment. Mother told you so often enough.
Now, get your sunbonnet and take a walk to the shore. You look tired.
I'll get the tea."

Louisa's tone was kind though firm. She Was really good to Mary Isabel
as long as Mary Isabel gave her her own way peaceably. But if she had
known Mary Isabel's secret she would never have permitted those walks
to the shore.

Mary Isabel sighed again, yielded, and went out. Across a green field
from the Irving cottage Dr. Donald Hamilton's big house was hooding
itself in the shadows of the thick fir grove that enabled the doctor
to have a garden. There was no shelter at the cottage, so the Irving
"girls" never tried to have a garden. Soon after Dr. Hamilton had come
there to live he had sent a bouquet of early daffodils over by his
housekeeper. Louisa had taken them gingerly in her extreme fingertips,
carried them across the field to the lawn fence, and cast them over
it, under the amused grey eyes of portly Dr. Hamilton, who was looking
out of his office window. Then Louisa had come back to the porch door
and ostentatiously washed her hands.

"I guess that will settle Donald Hamilton," she told the secretly
sorry Mary Isabel triumphantly, and it did settle him--at least as far
as any farther social advances were concerned.

Dr. Hamilton was an excellent physician and an equally excellent man.
Louisa Irving could not have picked a flaw in his history or
character. Indeed, against Dr. Hamilton himself she had no grudge, but
he was the brother of a man she hated and whose relatives were
consequently taboo in Louisa's eyes. Not that the brother was a bad
man either; he had simply taken the opposite side to the Irvings in a
notable church feud of a dozen years ago, and Louisa had never since
held any intercourse with him or his fellow sinners.

Mary Isabel did not look at the Hamilton house. She kept her head
resolutely turned away as she went down the shore lane with its wild
sweet loneliness of salt-withered grasses and piping sea-winds. Only
when she turned the corner of the fir-wood, which shut her out from
view of the houses, did she look timidly over the line-fence. Dr.
Hamilton was standing there, where the fence ran out to the sandy
shingle, smoking his little black pipe, which he took out and put away
when Mary Isabel came around the firs. Men did things like that
instinctively in Mary Isabel's company. There was something so
delicately virginal about her, in spite of her forty years, that they
gave her the reverence they would have paid to a very young, pure
girl.

Dr. Hamilton smiled at the little troubled face under the big
sunbonnet. Mary Isabel had to wear a sunbonnet. She would never have
done it from choice.

"What is the matter?" asked the doctor, in his big, breezy,
old-bachelor voice. He had another voice for sick-beds and rooms of
bereavement, but this one suited best with the purring of the waves
and winds.

"How do you know that anything is the matter?" Mary Isabel parried
demurely.

"By your face. Come now, tell me what it is."

"It is really nothing. I have just been foolish, that is all. I wanted
a hat with forget-me-nots and a grey silk, and Louisa says I must have
black and a bonnet."

The doctor looked indignant but held his peace. He and Mary Isabel had
tacitly agreed never to discuss Louisa, because such discussion would
not make for harmony. Mary Isabel's conscience would not let the
doctor say anything uncomplimentary of Louisa, and the doctor's

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