Character Analysis
Mrs. Freeman has worked for Mrs. Hopewell on the farm for the past four years. She's mysterious because the narrator doesn't get into her head and show us her perspective, leaving us instead to see her mostly from the points of view of Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga. This reinforces Mrs. Freeman's position as a sort of servant: The power over her presentation in the story is held in the hands of those who employ her.
Like Mrs. Hopewell, Mrs. Freeman seems to talk in platitudes. Her platitudes, however, seem far less pointed and noncommittal. And even more so than with her employer, her manner of speaking seems like a defense mechanism, like a way to deal with an employer who is constantly making offensive statements.
Mrs. Freeman is also given the important task of opening and closing the text. The introductory comparison of Mrs. Freeman's face to a truck with three gears lets us know that Mrs. Freeman faces the world with a machinelike approach—she never admits defeat and never reveals too much. As the wife of a tenant farmer on a busy farm, she probably does work like a machine.
Importantly, Mrs. Freeman's name is a shout-out to freedom. We know what you're wondering: If she's a tenant farmer's wife, how can she possibly be embodying freedom? And here's where Mrs. Freeman's status as story-ender comes into play. Check out the last paragraph:
Mrs. Freeman’s gaze drove forward and just touched him before he disappeared under the hill. Then she returned her attention to the evil-smelling onion shoot she was lifting from the ground. “Some can’t be that simple,” she said. “I know I never could.”
The final lines of the story suggest that Mrs. Freeman, like Manley, sees much more than her employer and Hulga. She may be good country people, but this doesn't mean what her employer thinks it does—instead, it implies an ability to see the world around her for what it truly is. The freedom she embodies, then, is the ability to see, to accurately assess and respond. In this way, while she may never own her own land, she owns her life in ways that completely elude Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga.