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“Circumstance” is a story of the strong female pioneer who challenges the literary tradition of the silent and acquiescent women of the more sentimental and male-authored literature of the Nineteenth Century. After altruistically nursing a neighbor, the protagonist of “Circumstance” must make her way home passing through the woods. She is visited by an omen, a winding shroud-like sheet that warns her about entering the woods; however, she does not shrink away, having no choice but to return home to her domestic duties and the loving relationships she shares with her husband and child. The heroine of “Circumstance” is pragmatic and “believes not in hallucinations” (269). She knows her mind, is rational and resourceful, is capable of acting on her own and, most importantly, has a voice. Rather than the silent women, Spofford gives us a woman who finds power through her voice. Here, voice is not used to seduce or betray man, as is often traditionally found in literature. Rather, voice has the power to save both the heroine of the tale and later her family.
Much of the criticism of Spofford’s “Circumstance” (1860) considers the story within the captivity tradition. For instance, Judith Fetterley recognizes the captivity story in “Circumstance,” and Jacob Frechette and Jon Adams (2) trace this element to Spofford’s recollection of her great grandmother being pinned by a panther for a night in the woods (2). But, as Robert Coleman remarks, the captivity story is primarily a genre of a previous century (18). Fetterley (262) and Dalke (74, 77) agree that the piece is metaphorically about the trapped women writing or creating—an erroneous comment considering the protagonist does not write, as does the protagonist of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” or create any original art, as does Lily in To the Lighthouse. Lisa Logan (124) and Anne Dalke (80) contend that the story deals with the breaching of domestic spaces, connecting it with other women’s literature of the time. According to an archetypal Judeo-Christian approach, the story can be interpreted as one of spiritual reawakening. Spofford’s “Circumstance” resembles Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” published in 1835. Twenty-five years after this now-canonical story about a young man’s dark night of the soul appeared, Spofford’s story appeared as a female revision: there are many...