Catharine Sedgwick's novel, A New-England Tale, tells the story of an orphan, Jane Elton, who “fights to preserve her honesty and its dignity in a family where religion is widely spoken but little practiced" (back cover). The story is set in the 1820s, a time when many children suffered in silence because there was really no way to get people to understand exactly how bad things were for them. The only way one could truly understand the lives of the children in these families would be to know what happened in their homes. Outside the home these women seemed perfectly normal and there was no reason to suspect any dishonesty. The author herself was raised by a Calvinist woman and realized how unfair things were for her and how her upbringing ultimately played a role in her outcome. Sedgwick uses her novel, A New-England Tale to express to her readers how terrible the life raised by women of Calvinist religion is and its effect describes their usual domestic life. She takes her readers on an in-depth journey through what a typical family would have been like in the 1820s, providing them with vivid descriptions and reconstructions of domestic life during this period. In the novel, Mrs. Wilson, a Calvinist woman took in her granddaughter Jane after the death of her parents. During one of their first conversations, Mrs. Wilson immediately expresses one of her family's important guidelines to her granddaughter after seeing that she is not as easily influenced as she initially thought. “I tell you once and for all, I don't allow any child in my house to know right from wrong: children have no reason, and should be very grateful, when they fall into... middle of paper... .. ..It is unclear whether Mrs. Wilson has realized the effect of her tactics on her children, but it is clear to the reader that they have a negative effect. In the early parts of the text, the narrator highlights this fact by stating that “Mrs. The Wilson children produced the fruits one might expect from his culture” (23). The word culture is used instead of simply religion because Mrs. Wilson has taken her religion far beyond its limits. The oppressive lifestyle forced his children, David and Elvira, as well as Jane, to live a simply failed and fruitless life. His son David grew up with little work ethic, poverty and a worthless life of crime. Her daughter Elvira is a scheming, unintelligent, loveless young woman who has grown up to make nothing of herself and Jane remains a pious, unhappy, seeking young woman whose potential has been used to no good purpose..