Nathaniel Hawthorne long took an interest in how women deal with the demands of life and the strictures that society imposed on them. In “The Wives of the Dead,” he brings up the problems women might face after the tragic loss of a husband. The story concerns two young women only recently married to brothers, who simultaneously lose their grooms to tragic deaths and find they have only each other for solace.

Mary and Margaret shared a house with their husbands. Now bereft of the men, the two women face a sudden emptiness in their home—the chairs their husbands once occupied; the beds where their men slept with them, now over-large with their absence; the eerie shadows cast by the lantern on the unused furniture. In a house where, hints the author, the two women quietly, but lovingly, reigned supreme, the women must now fill the gap left by the men.

The women are accustomed to working together. Their house, though modest, is neatly, if sparsely, furnished and decorated with knickknacks and bric-a-brac—symbols of their lives, neighborhoods, and husbands’ livelihoods. Now faced with unbearable torment, they turn to each other.