The protagonist of this short story, Sarah Penn, or “Mother,” is wife to Adoniram Penn and mother to Nanny and Hanson. The family lives on a New England farm in the latter part of the 19th century, and Sarah cares for the house and home. As she points out within the narrative, she cooks, cleans, and does other domestic chores without complaint. Freeman describes her:

She was a small woman, short and straight-waisted like a child in her brown cotton gown. Her forehead was mild and benevolent between the smooth curves of gray hair; there were meek downward lines about her nose and mouth; but her eyes, fixed upon the old man, looked as if the meekness had been the result of her own will, never of the will of another. (9)

Like many women during this era, Sarah is beholden to Adoniram, who she has been married to for 40 years but clearly has her own opinions and agenda. She is quite attentive to her duties, even if she understands her relative powerlessness within her domicile: “However deep a resentment she might be forced to hold against her husband, she would never fail in sedulous attention to his wants” (54).