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The Fork of the Road

—

by

Milan Terlunen
in

Popular categories: Digital Storytelling, Short Story

Edition created by Zoe Xi

Table of contents

Editor’s note

Olivia Howard Dunbar’s “The Fork of the Road” was originally published in Volume 28 of The New England Magazine between March and August of 1903. The University of Pennsylvania Online Books Page offers some more information about The New England Magazine: it was a monthly literary magazine published in Boston by J. N. McClinctock and Company from the late 19th to early 20th century, the continuation of another magazine called The Bay State Monthly. Many famous short stories were first published by The New England Magazine, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (in January of 1892) and Percival Lowell’s Mars (in August of 1895); these can be found by perusing the volumes of The New England Magazine preserved by HathiTrust.

Dunbar’s “The Fork of the Road” is a feminist short story about the conflict between two women, one an “excellent matron” and one decidedly not; with this conflict, it asks and answers the question of whether women need to conform to societal norms (720). The story was particularly relevant in its time: it was published near the height of the United States’ women’s suffrage movement, around the time that Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party became the first national political party to support women’s suffrage, as marked on a timeline from the American Bar Association. The suffrage movement was rapidly gaining momentum (according to the same timeline); in just under two decades, the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote, would be ratified; and accordingly, the protagonist of “The Fork of the Road” is a woman who defies gender norms. It is helpful (though not necessary) to go into reading the story knowing the surrounding historical context, of the women’s suffrage movement and the feminist Heterodoxy Club that Dunbar was part of, which the biographical/historical essay “Who Was Olivia Howard Dunbar? Contextualizing Dunbar’s ‘The Fork of the Road’” studies.

This version of “The Fork of the Road” includes footnotes explaining the history, language, and culture within the story; a note about how to understand “The Fork of the Road” in 2023; a glossary of unfamiliar terms, including both dated and uncommon words; and a list of discussion questions meant to provide a starting point for further inquiry into the themes and history of the story. I hope you enjoy reading!

– Zoe Xi (May 2023)

Ladylike: On Conforming in Olivia Howard Dunbar’s “The Fork of the Road”

In Olivia Howard Dunbar’s “The Fork of the Road,” Eunice Bowles, the protagonist, is an untraditional woman living at the fork of a road between a highway and a village named Harrisburg—this road is known as the road, or even the road, throughout the story. Eunice is untraditional in that she feels free to be herself: she doesn’t abide by societal norms and doesn’t care what others think about her. The “others” in this story are a group of ladies in Stoneham, a town at one end of the highway, led by Mrs. Ephraim, a prim and proper woman who takes insult at Eunice’s way of living. Dunbar wrote “The Fork of the Road” near the height of the women’s suffrage movement, as given in a timeline from the American Bar Association, and her story should be read with this history as backdrop. In contrasting Eunice and Mrs. Ephraim and especially in emphasizing the anger that Mrs. Ephraim feels toward Eunice for being nonconforming, Dunbar highlights a major difficulty that women faced in fighting for women’s suffrage: a common sentiment that they were not supposed to behave like this, to have strong opinions or even opinions at all, and more generally that they were being unwomanly and unladylike. In an article on the international history of the US suffrage movement, Katherine M. Marino even uses the word “hostility” to describe this sentiment; importantly, this hostility sometimes came from other women, like Mrs. Ephraim. Through the characters of Eunice and Mrs. Ephraim, Dunbar asks the question of whether women should conform to societal norms; through her narrative choices, such as making the narrator “close” to Eunice, she quietly implies that her answer is “no”; and through considering her background (provided by Elisa Rolle on her website Queer Places) as an activist in the women’s suffrage movement and a member of the radical feminist Heterodoxy Club, the reader can deduce that her answer is more along the lines of “most definitely not.”

Dunbar writes the character of Mrs. Ephraim as the complete opposite of Eunice: Mrs. Ephraim is proper and refined, very much a lady in the traditional sense of the word, while Eunice is wild and unrestrained, not a lady but very much herself. There’s a tug-of-war between Mrs. Ephraim’s definition of a woman and Eunice’s definition (which is also Dunbar’s definition), which, zooming out, is representative of the larger debate over what it means to be a woman that was active then and is active now. Mrs. Ephraim is always addressed as Mrs. Ephraim, while Eunice is never Mrs. Bowles, hinting that Mrs. Ephraim is tied to her husband and in turn to societal norms, while Eunice is simply herself; Mrs. Ephraim lives in a polished, “highly respectable” house in Stoneham, whereas Eunice lives at the fork of the road in a cottage that “seemed spontaneous, unkept, untouched by the sternly corrective hand of a Village Improvement Society” (Dunbar 723, 718). When this sternly corrective hand, in the form of Mrs. Ephraim, pays Eunice a visit, the contrast becomes even more clear: Mrs. Ephraim arrives at Eunice’s shabby cottage dressed “magnificent[ly],” in “black silk” with a “white satin bow,” in a buggy drawn by a horse “whose whims and mannerisms had long been servilely catered to”—importantly, this horse no longer has the attributes of a horse, but rather has been refined beyond all recognition, similar to Mrs. Ephraim (Dunbar 723). Mrs. Ephraim nudges Eunice: “If you’d spruce up an’ be a little more like folks” (Dunbar 724). She keeps referring to the “ladies up to the village”; to her, a lady is something to aspire to, and Eunice is far from a lady; and actually, this makes her angry (Dunbar 724).

Mrs. Ephraim’s anger toward Eunice can be seen through the lens of respectability politics, which Brianna Nuñez-Franklin defines as “the way that people attempting to make social change present their demands in a way that are acceptable to the dominant standards in their society” in her article “Democracy Limited: The Politics of Respectability.” Dunbar writes that “[the Stoneham ladies’] concern for [Eunice] was perceptibly tinged with hostility” (Dunbar 721). The ladies may feel that Eunice’s unladylike way of living is impeding progress for women, that women’s demands will never be taken seriously if they are not first “respectable”—as Pitcan, Marwick, and Boyd put it, “While civil rights activists and feminists criticize respectability politics as reactionary, subordinated groups frequently use these tactics to gain upward mobility.” The title of their paper, “Performing a Vanilla Self,” perfectly encapsulates the spirit of respectability politics. Mrs. Ephraim and the other Stoneham ladies may not be one-sided, bad characters but rather trying to approach the issue of women’s rights from a different angle; they may be putting on vanilla performances and angry at Eunice’s non-vanilla behavior. In this, “The Fork of the Road” can be compared with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which was published in the same magazine around the same time: Dunbar’s choice to make the Stoneham women, not men, angry at Eunice puts “The Fork of the Road” at contrast with “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the female protagonist, feeling imprisoned by her husband, slowly descends into madness; the story can be read as a commentary on the role of women as subordinate to men in late-1800s society. “The Fork of the Road” offers a different perspective, that sometimes women were the ones opposing women; the two stories can be seen as two answers to the question of what was inhibiting women’s progress at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Through her narrative choices, Dunbar implies that she is in agreement not with the Stoneham ladies but with Eunice, who is living the life she wants to live, not caring whether others deem her respectable. For instance, Dunbar often employs focalization, which, as H. Porter Abbott writes in his The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, “refers […] to the lens through which we see characters and events in the narrative” (Abbott 73). More specifically, Dunbar often switches between the narrator and Eunice as the focalizer in the story: for example, in the lines “From her back window, Eunice recognized Daisy and Mrs. Ephraim […] Never had the tented shelter in her yard looked so immaculately inviting,” the reader transitions from seeing the story play out from the eyes of the narrator to the eyes of Eunice (Dunbar 723). In this way, Dunbar prompts the reader to feel closer to Eunice and more perceptive to her point of view. As Abbott puts it, “We pick up thought and feeling through the eyes we see through” (Abbott 74). Abbott also speculates whether an author can truly separate themselves from their narrator: “Some might argue that in fact there is ‘no way’ I can entirely hide myself, even if I wanted to—that whatever narrative voice I choose to narrate my story, there would be discernible traces of the real me lurking in it” (Abbott 68). Then, it is likely that Dunbar herself is reflected in her narrator, who often swaps places with Eunice; the conclusion is that Dunbar is reflected in Eunice, that Eunice’s perspective on what it means to be a woman is Dunbar’s perspective. There’s even a place in the text where the narrator, and thereby, Dunbar, seems to address the reader: “Eunice laughed outright this time. How could she resent so pitifully absurd a misconception?” (Dunbar 725). The misconception is Mrs. Ephraim’s thinking that Eunice is living a poor, embarrassing life; the question can be taken as the narrator speaking to the reader. This is the most outright hint that Dunbar supports Eunice’s untraditional way of life; this support is further substantiated by Rolle’s description of Dunbar’s background, which we will study in another essay.

Dunbar’s “The Fork of the Road” subtly hints that Dunbar’s answer to the question asked in the introduction, of whether women should conform to societal norms, is “no.” For evidence that her answer is emphatically “no,” we turn to considering her background in the women’s suffrage movement and the feminist Heterodoxy Club in the biographical/historical essay “Who Was Olivia Howard Dunbar? Contextualizing Dunbar’s ‘The Fork of the Road.’”

Works Cited

Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Marino, Katherine M. “The International History of the US Suffrage Movement.” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-internationalist-history-of-the-us-suffrage-movement.htm#:~:text=The%20history%20of%20the%20US,led%20to%20the%20Nineteenth%20Amendment.

Nuñez-Franklin, Brianna. “Democracy Limited: The Politics of Respectability.” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/democracy-limited-the-politics-of-respectability.htm.

Pitcan, Micaela, Marwick, Alice E., and Boyd, Danah. “Performing a Vanilla Self: Respectability Politics, Social Class, and the Digital World.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 23, Issue 3, May 2018, Pages 163–179, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmy008.

Rolle, Elisa. “Olivia Howard Dunbar.” Queer Places, http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/klmno/Olivia%20H.%20Dunbar.html.

“Women’s Suffrage Timeline.” American Bar Association, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/programs/19th-amendment-centennial/toolkit/suffrage-timeline/.

Who Was Olivia Howard Dunbar? Contextualizing Dunbar’s “The Fork of the Road”

Olivia Howard Dunbar, the author of “The Fork of the Road,” was an American short-story writer, journalist, and biographer. Elisa Rolle provides a short summary of Dunbar’s life on her website, Queer Places: Dunbar was born in 1873 in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, close to the setting of Stoneham, Massachusetts in “The Fork of the Road.” She graduated from Smith College, initially pursuing a career in newspaper journalism and later switching to freelance writing. She married Ridgely Torrence, a poet, in 1914, after meeting him in a literary club she attended that also included the poets Percy MacKaye, William Vaughn Moody, and Edwin Arlington Robinson. She died in 1953 at age 80.

Dunbar was a Macdowell Fellow (where Macdowell is a well-regarded artist’s residency program). A paragraph on Macdowell’s website states that Dunbar is remembered for her stories about ghosts; her 1905 essay, “The Decay of the Ghost in Fiction,” defending the genre of ghost stories in the middle of its decline, is her most well-known work. This was interesting to me insofar that there were no ghosts in “The Fork of the Road”; I wondered whether Dunbar was venturing out of her comfort zone with this story. The paragraph continues: besides The New England Magazine, where Dunbar published “The Fork of the Road,” Dunbar also published works in several popular literary magazines of her time, including Harper’s and The Dial.

It turns out that many of Dunbar’s works contained feminist themes, as noted in the same paragraph; for instance, her ghost story “The Long Chamber” was included in Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s What Did Miss Darrington See? An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction. Although “The Fork of the Road” had at first appeared detached from Dunbar’s ghost stories, I realized here that the themes and questions present in the story, of conforming and what it means to be a woman, were present in many of Dunbar’s stories and in fact tied her body of work together. According to the same paragraph, Dunbar herself was active in the women’s suffrage movement, which began in 1847 with the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, just before she was born, and ended in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th amendment, which allowed women to vote, and the subsequent disbanding of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association, as reported on a timeline from the American Bar Association.

Besides the suffrage movement, Rolle writes that Dunbar was also active in the Heterodoxy Club, which Rolle describes as a feminist debating group in Greenwich Village, New York in the early twentieth century that served as a forum for more radical feminist ideas than those championed in the women’s suffrage movement. In her article “Anything But Orthodox,” Jena Hinton explains the name “Heterodoxy” further: “Membership [in the Heterodoxy Club] was granted on a single condition: that the prospective member ‘not be orthodox in his or her position.’” The focus on the word “orthodox,” on not being orthodox, is reminiscent of Eunice’s unorthodox way of living in “The Fork of the Road,” and I could even imagine that Dunbar wrote the story and in particular the conflict between Mrs. Ephraim and Eunice to reflect the conflict between the unorthodox thinking championed by the Heterodoxy Club and the pushback from society. I decided to further study the Heterodoxy Club in order to better understand “The Fork of the Road.”

I realized that Dunbar’s time in the Heterodoxy Club was very much reflected in “The Fork of the Road”: in the central conflict, as noted before, in the protagonist, Eunice, in how Dunbar seems to identify with Eunice, and even in the title itself. On the purpose of the Heterodoxy Club, Hinton writes that “Heterodoxy […] determined to create an intimate space for ideas to burst forth organically and without judgment, allowing these women to exist freely and openly as themselves.” The words “freely” and “openly” especially are reminiscent of the free and open and unorthodox Eunice, wearing pink calico and running into the road to greet every stranger who passes, living her life as she pleases and “find[ing] life exceptionally full and interesting” (720). In this way, “The Fork of the Road” is likely to appeal to readers who enjoy feminist literature: the protagonist of “The Fork of the Road,” who exemplifies that women need not conform to society’s expectations, is exciting and radical and espouses feminist values. Even the title of the story, “The Fork of the Road,” has connections to feminism and the Heterodoxy Club. The road is a highway between Stoneham and Franklin, Massachusetts; Eunice lives at the point where the road branches off to a village called Harrisburg, known as the fork of the road; and Mrs. Ephraim lives in Stoneham. The fork of the road is the critical junction, the place where debate takes place—should I go this way or that way? It’s the place where Eunice lives. Mrs. Ephraim, all the way up in Stoneham, has already chosen her direction, her values, but Eunice is still in the midst of the debate—and actually, she’s the object of the debate: must women conform? The answer given collectively by Eunice and Dunbar is “no.” This is where I think the influence of the Heterodoxy Club comes in most heavily, and this is where “The Fork of the Road” goes from being just a story to a feminist story. To readers of feminist literature—this story is for you.

Works Cited

Hinton, Jena. “Anything But Orthodox: The Feminists of the Heterodoxy Club.” Village Preservation, https://www.villagepreservation.org/2022/12/13/heterodoxy-club/.

“Olivia Howard Dunbar.” Macdowell, https://www.macdowell.org/artists/olivia-dunbar.

Rolle, Elisa. “Heterodoxy Club.” Queer Places, http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/fghij/Heterodoxy%20Club.html.

Rolle, Elisa. “Olivia Howard Dunbar.” Queer Places, http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/klmno/Olivia%20H.%20Dunbar.html.

“Women’s Suffrage Timeline.” American Bar Association, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/programs/19th-amendment-centennial/toolkit/suffrage-timeline/.

“The Fork of the Road” by Olivia Howard Dunbar

At the back of the cottage rose the darkly wooded side of the nearest of the surrounding hills. From three other directions, pursuing casually the uneven line of least resistance, there wandered and converged at this spot in the tiny valley three lazy, unbusinesslike and altogether charming roads. That was the way it would have impressed a stranger; according to local geography, however, it was here that the ancient highway between Franklin and Stoneham branched off to the less important village of Harrisburg, the lonely, bowl-shaped valley being known for this reason as “the fork o’ the road.”1 The road, because of its antiquity, may have seemed to those wise in tradition, who commonly traversed it, a dignified and impressive avenue.2 As a matter of fact, it showed a capriciousness and coquetry quite unbefitting its years; and would plunge down rocky declivities or dart unexpectedly into thick woodlands with all the inconsequence of reckless youth. And now, on this vivid day in late August, the road, never conveniently wide, had shrunk almost to a wavering gray line of dust, so heavily did there droop over its neglected borders that exquisite tangle of bloom,—misty blue, yellow and pinkish lilac,—peculiar to the waning season.

The cottage itself was not out of keeping with its leisurely and beflowered avenues of approach. It also seemed spontaneous, unkept, untouched by the sternly corrective hand of a Village Improvement Society.3 Its outlines wavered through senility, exactly as did those of the road. Its roof appeared to be so loosely shingled as quite to imperil life within. Its surface, having never known the smug, complacent feel of a paint-brush, had acquired a sombre and non-committal tone from out which the many-paned windows glanced with surprising emphasis of expression, while massed against it a miniature wilderness of dahlias, phlox and candy-tuft seemed fairly to shriek in wild chromatic chorus.

With the exception, indeed, of Eunice Bowles’ temple of hospitality, everything at the fork of the road spoke of unmeasured time and unspoiled nature. This structure alone had the interest of human individuality. The props supporting it were six unstripped poles, over which a piece of grayish tent-cloth was stretched roofwise and neatly fastened. Its floor was a plank platform raised a foot or two above the ground; and it was unwalled, so that no beguilement of prospect was sacrificed, while the thousand sweet odors of ripening summer swept through it unintermittently. Upon this sheltered platform, which was covered, for greater elegance, with a braided rug, held in place by white, smooth stones, were set wooden chairs, sociably grouped about a small, linoleum-covered table that bore on this day, as usual, a porcelain vase filled with blossoms, a glass water-pitcher ornamented by a floral design in red, and a thick glass tumbler. In fact, far more pretentious temples than this have known less devoutly assiduous priestesses than Eunice. The structure was set as near to the stone wall and therefore as near to the road as was possible, its carefully considered details of decoration and its utter incongruity with its surroundings being therefore apparent, if not intelligible, to all who travelled by the road. Strangers, indeed, ignorant of the significance of the arrangement, were apt to smile indulgently, thinking it some child’s playhouse and recalling similar artless devices of their own or their children’s infancy. But to Eunice, who had not only conceived but constructed this annex to her home, it was the magic equivalent of brilliant ballrooms and thronged salons. Set there almost on the highway, in that centre of travel and traffic, this desperately hospitable soul felt the little shelter to be an almost inspired compromise between the middle of the road, which was often wet and always uncertain, and the interior of her shabby cottage. And she had long ago been entranced to discover with how little difficulty hesitating visitors who would have felt it too deliberate a move to cross her doorstep could be enticed within this simple resting-place.

Toward noon of this August day, there came, at a sturdy professional jog from Stoneham along the road to the valley, Mr. Solomon Bates, Stoneham’s comfortably prosperous butcher. The wheels of his professional vehicle were wide and heavy, crushing much of the obstreperous luxuriance of those lilac and blue and yellow blossoms. Of this, however, Mr. Bates was not aware. Indeed, no disquieting reflection of any sort disturbed the gentle doze into which the noonday heat had lulled him as his cart rattled noisily down into the valley. He did not know, therefore, that he had been sighted from afar by Eunice Bowles, according to her custom, or that, at his approach, the small, rusty woman with faded blue eyes that were always alert with an expression of friendly curiosity, darted from the cottage to the road, carrying in her blue gingham apron something that was partly substance yet was chiefly commotion.

“Solomon Bates!” called Eunice Bowles with amiable imperativeness. “Solomon!”

Mr. Bates’ horse intelligently halted. At which Mr. Bates woke up.

“Want you should see one of my shag kittens,” announced Eunice. “’Tain’t three weeks old vet and see how smart ’tis! Ain’t you, Fluff?” And she removed the covering of her apron from the ball of commotion within, thereby calming it appreciably.

“Quite a kitten!” good naturedly commented Mr. Solomon Bates. He was always indulgent to Eunice Bowles, even though—or perhaps because—she was not of his clientele. So he continued to grin widely and lazily while Eunice, ravished with the budding beauties of her newest pet, celebrated them with ecstatic eloquence.

“Quite a kitten,” he repeated, after a little. “Guess you’ve got the handsomest shag cats in the county,” he added generously.

“Well, I believe it,” assented Eunice, briskly. “I never did see handsomer cats mvself.”

Mr. Bates clucked to his horse, then halted again. “Shouldn’t wonder if you had a caller this afternoon, Mis’ Bowles,” said he.

“Why, who’s that?” asked Eunice.

“Mis’ Ephraim, she was saying this morning she was thinking some of driving over this afternoon. Wanted to know if I thought ‘twas goin’ to rain. Told her I guess not to-day.”

“Mercy, no,” agreed Eunice. “We’re in for a fair spell now.”

And the butcher rattled on, while Eunice returned to resume the housewifely operations that had meantime hung suspended in her kitchen, always keeping watch, however, from her back window, for the next passer-by. Fortunately for these social activities of hers, the preparation of one of Eunice’s dinners did not demand much concentration. Eunice herself was content with little, and it was the most agreeable characteristic of Lemuel Bowles that he was not in any sense exacting.

At eighteen, Eunice Wait had innocently accepted Lemuel Bowles and the one-story cottage at the fork of the road as representing a sufficiently desirable matrimonial and social future. Even now, twenty-five years later, it had not occurred to her to modify these convictions of her wedding day. Although the subject, among her former acquaintances, of no little contemptuous commiseration and gloomy prophecy, Eunice was obstinate enough to find life exceptionally full and interesting, contriving, as she did, a daily exchange of courtesies with travellers of many types. If the hospitality which she thus achieved was necessarily of a casual character, it was none the less spirited and sincere, and it had come to be understood that there was no hour of the day when the traveller passing through the valley could hope to elude her eternal vigilance. As a matter of fact, it was, to the leisurely and open-minded, a distinct piece of good fortune to be espied, while yet half a mile distant, from the kitchen window, to be brought to a short stop in the middle of the road by an alert little figure in pink calico, and to be persuaded to pause for a social interval under the hospitable tent.

The excellent matrons of Stoneham, where Eunice had spent her girlhood, and from which the five miles of intervening road had effectually separated her, found one of their most congenial themes, when grouped for the afternoon against the background of inflexible neatness presented by one of their own sitting-rooms, in the depreciation, not only of Lemuel and of Eunice, but in the tolerance of each other displayed by these two. Lemuel, it is true, offended public opinion in many ways. His farming was of a disgracefully desultory character. Apparently he quite lacked the desire either to provide properly for Eunice or to stand, himself, as a stalwart and respectable member of society. This was bad enough. But Eunice, in her apparent unconsciousness of the discrepancy between her lot and those of her well-to-do contemporaries, offended even more seriously. Their concern for her was perceptibly tinged with hostility. They even spoke with a grim pleasure of that melancholy time when she, being publicly driven to the poorhouse, should furnish a wholesome warning and a needed incitement to thrift.

Eunice, however, was concerned as little with the prospective journey to the poorhouse as with the matrons of Stoneham. Her immediate concerns were engrossing enough. For not only to Lemuel, to the one-story cottage, to poverty and isolation, the unvaryingly cheerful Eunice was obliged to adapt herself, but also during a large part of the year, to the unameliorated climate. When November brought strong winds that circled, shrieking in and about the hollow, and when snows that had no alternating thaws sheeted the hills behind the cottage and drifted with the relentless caprice of elemental forces through the little valley, closing for long silent winter months roads to the nearest villages,—-Eunice was reluctantly obliged to forswear all social intercourse. At this season she would retire cheerfully to her “back room,” which was kitchen, dining-room and sitting-room in one, and devote her leisure to the weaving of strips of rag carpet. Until April should bring the first hint of warmth, the cottage might as well have been a ship drifting among arctic snows.

But when the long-enduring snows of the village melted into yellow torrents that furrowed Eunice’s very dooryard, she would promptly leave her loom and take eager half-hourly observations of the landscape from the windows of her “front room.” Shortly, she knew, local communication would again be established by means of an occasional farm-wagon with whose driver she could exchange a few shrill words from the window, and in a few heavenly weeks it would be the ploughing, and then the planting season, and by that time she would be able to begin work in her own small garden. To her, as to the gay world of London, the beginning of summer meant the opening of the social season; and her industrious clearing of the little pathway leading from her doorstep to the road, as well as her joyful planning of close-set rows of blossoming plants, were but a preparation for the requirements of that delightful and exciting time.

Meanwhile, Eunice’s precious facilities for intercourse with the outer world were but scantily appreciated in Stoneham, where winter was a less severe experience than with her, and summer a less enchanting carnival. Ever freshly stimulated, however, by the bits of gossip anent proceedings at the fork of the road at which their own inviolate respectability stood aghast, Eunice’s remote connections and childhood acquaintances still paid her the compliment of a lively and repeated discussion of her affairs.4 Indeed, it was only a week previous that Mrs. Ephraim Bowles, who was the wife of Lemuel Bowles’ second cousin and a woman of masterful prominence in both the religious and secular life, had felt it incumbent upon her, during one of these familiar discussions, to take a definitely condemnatory stand.

“It don’t seem right,” had insisted Mrs. Ephraim’s commanding bass voice, “for a Bowles to peter out so.” Mrs. Ephraim held strong convictions on the subject of family. “There ain’t a Sunday, you might say, that I don’t sit there in my pew at meetin’ and look at them three brass tablets commemoratin’ the Bowleses that was ministers of this parish,—that I don’t say to myself, Has Lemuel, sittin’ down there in idleness at the fork o’ the road, forgot he’s a Bowles? When I was a young girl, ‘twas considered something pretty fine here in Stoneham to be a Bowles, and some think ’tis still. And here’s Lem, the last o’ his branch o’ the family, sittin’ on his back doorstep, lettin’ his little farm run down to nothin’ and watchin’ his wife gaddin’ out into the road and makin’ a fool of herself as often as anybody goes by!”

“I don’t suppose,” protested Mrs. Austin Peters, the minister’s wife, a sanctified little lady, “that Eunice is altogether to blame for her goings on. It’s pretty lonesome down there in the valley. If she could get over to church once in a while, or to a strawberry festival, or something to take her mind off Lem—”

“Well, I don’t think Lem’s on her mind to any extent,” interrupted Mr. Ephraim, “or she’d have put some spunk into him years ago. He’s weak, but I declare, I think she must be pretty near a fool! Does anybody think I’d have slept a single night under that roof without having it fresh shingled?” she challenged, looking around the little circle.

“It almost seems,” said Mrs. Peters, vaguely, “as if we might do something for Mrs. Bowles.”

“Well, I don’t suppose anybody but the Lord’s in a position to make over Eunice!” Mrs. Ephraim smiled grimly.

“I never was one to believe in glossing things over,” declared Mrs. Jonathan Pratt, and everybody that heard her, believed her. “Eunice Bowles has been a-makin’ her bed all these years, and now she’ll have to lie in it. If it’s meant!” she added, with the inconsistency of the fatalist, “that she and Lem sh’d go to the poorhouse, why, then, they’d better make up their minds to it.”

“Perhaps she’d be a little different,” persisted Mrs. Peters, “if she could get to church. My husband said the other day, said he: ‘If some of those good ladies would take turns driving over to the valley Sunday mornings and bringing Mrs. Bowles to service, why, I think,’ said he, ‘that ’twould be a real Christian act.’”

The silence became almost tangible, while the other women instinctively looked to catch Mrs. Ephraim’s expression.

Mrs. Peters took a long breath designed to inspire her with courage. “And he said at the time that while he didn’t know as it was the minister’s place to bring folks to church, he’d send for her every other Sunday if you ladies would arrange among yourselves for the alternate days,—and if some of you who knew her better would speak to her first and consult her.”

“Why, now, I should think that would be real nice for Mis’ Bowles, commented, at last, a hitherto silent member.”It’s a long time since she’s met with folks. She ought to be real grateful.”

“Humph!” Mrs. Ephraim snorted incredulity as to the latter surmise.

“Well, then,” imperatively suggested Mrs. Jonathan Pratt, “if Eunice is a-going to be toted to meeting, Mis’ Ephraim’s the one to prepare her. Mis’ Ephraim’s the only one here that’s connected with the Lem Bowleses by ties o’ blood—”

“Ties o’ marriage!” amended Mrs. Ephraim, snappily.

“Whatever they be,” went on Mrs. Pratt, “and it’s plain enough that if any missionary work’s to be done down to the valley, it’s Mis’ Ephraim’s place to start it.”

And so it was agreed upon.

So it happened that on this same golden August day Mrs. Ephraim, who had some years since discontinued her perfunctory annual calls upon Mrs. Lemuel, costumed herself conscientiously for the duty she had assumed. At three o’clock in the afternoon the Bowles hired man brought the Bowles buggy, drawn by the Bowles horse, Daisy, an animal whose whims and mannerisms had long been servilely catered to, before Mrs. Ephraim’s highly respectable porch. At which Mrs. Ephraim herself—magnificent in a bonnet whose striking decoration of purple velvet pansies brought into bold contrast the dark, leathery tinge of her massive face, thrown into further relief by the white satin bow that lay flattened out upon her broad black silk bosom,—set her jaws and gingerly guided Daisy along the road to the valley. It was Daisy’s pleasure to cover this route at a leisurely and intermittent pace, and as she was the only member of the Bowles family free from Mrs. Ephraim’s control, she followed absolutely the promptings of her capricious taste.

From her back window, Eunice recognized Daisy and Mrs. Ephraim at a considerable distance and felicitated herself on having profited by Mr. Bates’ kindly warning. Never had the tented shelter in the yard looked so immaculately inviting. With its floor freshly scrubbed, the braided rug shaken and a fresh bunch of marigolds set on the table, Eunice was happily impatient to see the effect upon her always superior cousin-in-law of this impressive provision for entertainment. She could not be sufficiently thankful that Mrs. Ephraim—because she was Mrs. Ephraim—was not to catch her unawares. Mindful of past snubs, however, Eunice decided that instead of advancing cordially into the highway, as was her custom, she would preserve her dignity by going no further than the petunia-bed. Second-cousinly aloofness could have been expressed no more pointedly.

“I suppose you’re in too much of a hurry to stop, Cousin Sarah,” called out Eunice, with calculated indifference, from the petunias.

“Why, I don’t know as I be to-day, Eunice.” Mrs. Ephraim carefully injected a certain condescension into her tone, that her visit might be appreciated as a favor rather than a social attention. “I don’t know but I’ll just hitch Daisy under your maple tree, she does hate the sun; and then I’ll stop and visit with you a minute.”

Eunice had strong objections to Daisy’s being hitched under the maple tree, knowing the horse’s propensity for disturbing the surrounding turf; but few people had the hardihood to express disapprobation to Mrs. Ephraim, and so she said nothing.

“Your petunias don’t seem to grow very big,” commented the visitor, as, scorning the platform in the yard as a social innovation not yet adequately sanctioned, she followed Eunice into her front room. “Mine are doing just beautiful, and my nasturtiums, too. But then, I always see that they have good soil. I tell Ephraim it’s better to have no posies at all than not to nourish ’em well.”

Even the persistently social Eunice could find nothing to say to this.

“I expect,” Mrs. Ephraim continued, as she settled herself in the best rocking-chair, “that you’d be kinder lonesome, though, if ’twasn’t for your posies, whether they grow well or not.”

“I never have a chance to get lonesome, Cousin Sarah,” said Eunice, with something like complacency. “You know I have a great deal of company.”

“Why, is that so?” Mrs. Ephrim feigned ignorance. “No, I didn’t suppose you saw much of folks, never comin’ into the village and havin’ no horse or nothin’.”

“You haven’t been to see me very lately, Cousin Sarah,” Eunice mustered up courage to say. “You might know more about the way I live if you had.”

“Oh, well, I guess I can imagine!” Mrs. Ephraim spoke as from Olympian heights. “And I must say, I hate to see a Bowles livin’ off in the woods this way as if they was different from other folks, and there’s others that think so, too. And I took the trouble to come down here to-day and tell you so, though ’tain’t likely I’ll ever get thanked for it!”

“If you’re ashamed of this family,” observed Eunice, overcoming her awe of her relative, “you’d better speak to Lem. He’s in the potato patch this minute.”

“I’ve nothing to say to Lem,” declared Mrs. Ephraim, thus relieving her mind of a burden it had borne for some time. “Lem’s never had no fair chance an’ he’s weak, anyway. He’s a Bowles, though, an’ he might have amounted to some- thing if he’d had anybody to lean on. But that ain’t what I come to say. The ladies up to the village are a good Christian lot of women and ‘tain’t a week ago that they got to talkin’ about you, stuck off here in the woods, and they decided, these ladies did, that ‘twould be an excellent thing for you, as well as more of a credit to the Bowles family and to the village, if you’d spruce up an’ be a little more like folks.”

“Well now, if you hadn’t told me otherwise, Cousin Sarah,” Eunice broke in, “I should have thought that was one of your own sentiments. It does sound dreadful like you.”

“And those ladies,” pursued Mrs. Ephraim, ignoring this mild sarcasm—“and that’s what I come to tell you to-day—are willing to take turns bringing you in to meeting Sunday and taking you back again. Mis’ Peters, she’s offered to send after you the first Sunday. She’s a real good-hearted little woman, and you’ll enjoy her husband’s sermon. Mr. Peters has a wonderful command o’ language. And do for mercy’s sake be ready in season next Sunday. If there’s anything I don’t consider respectable, it’s to come streakin’ into church after the service has begun. I’ll say this much for the Bowleses, that they’re always prompt at church. You couldn’t make Ephraim late for meeting, not if every clock in town stopped the night before.”

“Well, I’m not a Bowles, Cousin Sarah,” observed Eunice, as Mrs. Ephraim stopped for breath.

“Why no, but you can try to act as if you was, can’t you?”

“Indeed I can’t, nor don’t want to,” said Eunice, with unexpected decision. “I have my own way of living, and you and the ladies up to the village have yours,—and I guess vou’ll have to let me keep mine. You may thank em, though, for offerin’ to take me to church. You may thank ’em kindly, Sarah, and tell ’em I prefer to stay at home!”

Mrs. Ephraim’s leather-colored face grew darkly flushed. “Well, I guess I’Il tell ’em no such thing, Eunice Bowles,” said she. “You’ve got the opportunity, now, to go to meeting and be respectable, and you’ve got to go.”

Eunice laughed, as she had a way of doing when a quarrel was imminent. “Then you’ll have to take and drag me to town by the hand, Cousin Sarah,” said she, “for I won’t go no other way. And if I see any team coming for me, I’ll just hide in my back room. I don’t want anything of them, nor you, nor nobody alive!”

“Well, then, all I can say,” said the older woman, with angry scorn, “is that you’re pleased with mighty little! ’Twould take a fool to be pleased with what you’ve got!”

Eunice laughed outright this time. How could she resent so pitifully absurd a misconception?

“Land’s sakes, Cousin Sarah,” she flung in the face of the other’s discomfiture, “a smart woman like you ought to be able to see that I’ve got plenty to be contented with. There ain’t a woman anywhere,” she went on, very earnestly, “that I’d change places with. Well, that is, I’ve read of people I’d like to be, and dreamed of others: but you never was one of them, Cousin Sarah Bowles, no, you never was one of them! To be sure, I ain’t got riches, but what in the world should I buy with them? I guess this little house is big enough for Lem and me, and there’s a great many things in it I’m fond of, Sarah. To be sure, I have often thought I’d like a parlor organ, but a body’s got to have something to wish for. And I couldn’t wish you nothing better, Cousin Sarah, good as you think yourself, than to live right here at the fork of the road!

“Why, a year ago last spring Cousin Mary Wait of Elmfield, she took me to spend a couple of days with her. Cousin Mary she lives near the stores and on a street where there’s a great deal of passing, and she does think her house is iust about all it could be. But I went in that little kitchen of hers and there wasn’t room to swing a cat. Only one window and after least mite of cooking there was smoke enough to choke you. I said to myself, That’s what ‘tis to live to Elmfield! So I came right back home and built the kitchen fire and set my teakettle on my little stove, and I said to Lemuel that I’d rather cook there in my backroom, with the draught blowin’ through on a hot day and those old mountains peckin’ in at the window, than have a hundred trolley cars pass my door every day!

“Same way with my front room here. There’s nothing I can’t see, Sarah, from that window where you be now. There’s nobody can pass by the fork o’ the road that I don’t see ‘em, and nine times out o’ ten they stop for a pleasant little talk. I don’t suppose there’s a house in the county as centrally situated as mine, and though you may not know it, Sarah, I have a great many friends among the people that drive about here. I will say this, that a stranger comin’ here might not be able to enjoy it as much as I do. Why only yesterday, there was eleven teams passed here in the course o’ the day and not one, if you’ll believe it, but stopped for a few words. There’s hardly a day in summer that some little gift o’ vegetables or such like from folks’ gardens ain’t left here, an’ havin’ as many posies as I do I can return their compliments. Sol Bates, he goes past here every week and he says there ain’t any dahlias in Stoneham equal to mine. And he was remarking only this morning, Solomon was, that I had the handsomest shag kitten—”

“I don’t feel it’s respectable to listen to your foolish talk no longer, Eunice,” broke in Mrs. Ephraim, as she rose and flounced toward the outer door. “You’re a good deal worse off than I thought! When anybody refuses to go to meetin’ and expects to get to Heaven on the strength o’ havin’ shag cats—I don’t feel that I have any power to help ‘em from the depths they’re flounderin’ in!”

With which, Mrs. Ephraim hastily drew a little fringed white silk shawl about her shoulders and strode angrily down to where Daisy stood in a senile doze under the maple tree. Promptly, with audible mutterings and an entire omission of the formality of adieux, the baffled missionary withdrew from the hospitality of the cottage at the fork of the road and pursued her way toward Stoncham. Henceforth, Eunice should bear the responsibility of her own redemption. Mrs. Ephraim, having righteously discharged her duty to her family and to her conscience, considered herself permanently relieved of concern in the affairs of her worthy connections.

Meanwhile, Eunice had sought solace with a turbulently sportive family of kittens. “I declare, Fluff,” affectionately remarked her contented mistress, taking the youngest in her lap, “I’m glad I don’t see Cousin Sarah Bowles more’n once in ten years! She makes me gladder’n ever that I live down here at the fork o’ the road!”

Glossary of unfamiliar terms

The definitions for the following terms were taken from the dictionary by Merriam-Webster.

adieux: plural of adieu. (p. 10)

anent: about; concerning. (p. 4)

assiduous: showing great care, attention, and effort: marked by careful unremitting attention or persistent application. (p. 1)

beflower: to decorate with flowers. (p. 1)

caprice: a sudden, usually unpredictable condition, change, or series of changes. (p. 4)

chromatic: of or relating to color or color phenomena or sensations; highly colored. (p. 1)

commiserate: to feel or express sympathy. (p. 3)

declivity: a descending slope. (p. 1)

desultory: disappointing in progress, performance, or quality. (p. 3)

disapprobation: the act or state of disapproving. (p. 7)

discomfiture: a state of perplexity and embarrassment. (p. 9)

incumbent: imposed as a duty. (p. 4)

nasturtium: an herb of Central and South America with showy spurred flowers and pungent edible seeds and leaves. (p. 7)

obstreperous: stubbornly resistant to control. (p. 2)

poorhouse: a place maintained at public expense to house needy or dependent persons. (p. 4, 5)

phlox: an American herb that usually has pink, purple, white, or variegated flowers. (p. 1)

sportive: frolicsome; playful. (p. 10)

throng: to crowd upon. (p. 2)

Discussion questions

  1. Compare and contrast Eunice and Mrs. Ephraim. How are they different? Are they in any way similar?
  2. Why does Dunbar choose to italicize the before road when referring to the titular road containing a fork? Note that Dunbar does not italicize any other word in the story. Why is the fork important?
  3. Why do the ladies of Stoneham keep coming back to talking about Eunice? Why is it that “their concern for her was perceptibly tinged with hostility?” (4). Think about this question through the lens of respectability politics.
  4. Why are the ladies of Stoneham always referred to as “Mrs. last name” (e.g., Mrs. Ephraim, Mrs. Peters), while Eunice is simply referred to as Eunice (instead of Mrs. Bowles)?
  5. How might Dunbar’s opinions be reflected in her narrator?
  6. A follow-up to question (5): Consider these sentences: “Eunice laughed outright this time. How could she resent so pitifully absurd a misconception?” (9). Is this Eunice or the narrator talking? How might this suggest that Dunbar shares Eunice’s perspective?
  7. How does knowing the historical context surrounding “The Fork of the Road” affect your perception of the story?

How to understand “The Fork of the Road” in 2023

This section is meant to be read after reading the biographical/historical and interpretive essays.

Why should we still care about Olivia Howard Dunbar’s “The Fork of the Road,” which, after all, was published 120 years ago, in 1903? This is a natural follow-up question after reading the story; my answer is that the radically feminist ideas and themes contained in “The Fork of the Road” are still very much relevant in present-day America.

In 1903, the women’s suffrage movement was gaining traction (according to a timeline from the American Bar Association); the women of the Heterodoxy Club were “meet[ing] for lunch in Greenwich Village every other Saturday […] to steep themselves in the fiery debate and transformative ideas that arose from the club’s discussions” (according to Jena Hinton); change was in the air, about to happen; and one can imagine a sense of urgency to move forward and realize this change. This sense of urgency is present also in America today: Roe v. Wade was recently overturned; it feels as if we are going backwards with respect to women’s rights after making so much progress for so many years; and it is most crucial to stop this moving backwards, to continue to make progress. In this way, “The Fork of the Road” is as relevant now as it was all the way back in 1903: “The Fork of the Road” is about a woman who defies society’s expectations of her, who takes a stand for herself and in doing so takes a stand for all women. We need women like her again today.

Bibliographical references

“About Us.” Village Improvement Society of Dennis, https://www.villageimprovementsocietyofdennisma.com/about-us.

Dictionary by Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com.

Hinton, Jena. “Anything But Orthodox: The Feminists of the Heterodoxy Club.” Village Preservation, https://www.villagepreservation.org/2022/12/13/heterodoxy-club/.

“How to get from Franklin to Stoneham, MA.” Google Maps, https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Franklin,+MA/Stoneham,+MA/@42.2631225,-71.6238026,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x89e46f953c773e13:0x999d93a37aab9122!2m2!1d-71.396725!2d42.0834313!1m5!1m1!1s0x89e30ad6c553aee9:0x1f743e621d33b724!2m2!1d-71.1001891!2d42.4816758!3e0.

“The Online Books Page: The New England Magazine.” University of Pennsylvania Libraries, https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=nemag1886.

“Volumes of The New England Magazine and The Bay State Monthly from 1886 to 1916.” HathiTrust, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006786569.

“Women’s Suffrage Timeline.” American Bar Association, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/programs/19th-amendment-centennial/toolkit/suffrage-timeline/.

License

The text of “The Fork of the Road” is in the public domain.

All editorial material by Zoe Xi is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

  1. Today, Franklin is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, southwest of Boston; Stoneham is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, slightly north of Boston; and Harrisburg is no longer a town in Massachusetts. The distance between Franklin and Stoneham is thirty-six miles, a fifty minute drive or twelve-hour walk, according to Google Maps.↩︎
  2. Dunbar sometimes italicizes the word “the” before “road” when referring to the titular road.↩︎
  3. Village Improvement Societies were groups of volunteers that maintained and improved their town’s public facilities, according to a website for the Village Improvement Society of Dennis, Massachusetts. The website goes on to note that these societies were common around the beginning of the 20th century, when this story was published.↩︎
  4. The dictionary by Merriam-Webster provides some historical background on the old-fashioned word “anent.” “Anent” has been around since 800 B.C.; it was first found in the epic Beowulf. It had almost died out in the seventeenth century but was then revived in the nineteenth century, around the time “The Fork of the Road” was published, and it is notable for this; words rarely rise from their graves, so to speak.↩︎