Overcoming Fear: Laura E. Richards’s Short Story, ‘The Shed Chamber’

Nora, the protagonist in "The Shed Chamber," was given a bedroom upstairs that contains another smaller room with a door, bare except for some old trunks. (Alena Popova/Shutterstock)

Fear can paralyze us and prevent us from taking action, and courage can overcome its paralyzing force.

In her short story “The Shed Chamber,” Laura E. Richards shows us courage in action and how one young woman overcame her fear. She tells the story of young Nora who leaves home to work for a family in need.

Leaving home for the first time, Nora feels understandably anxious and cautious. She doubts whether she will like the family and whether the family will approve of her. Yet when she meets the Bowles family, she realizes, as does the biblical heroine Esther, that “perhaps [she] was made for such a time as this.” Mrs. Bowles is an invalid with three children, Mr. Bowles cannot care for all of them alone, and the previously hired help left everything in disarray.

Nora’s concern and compassion for the Bowles family overcomes her apprehensions. She immediately begins cleaning the kitchen, feeding the family, and setting the house to rights. Within a few days, Nora “feels that she belongs there.” The family truly needs her and welcomes her completely into their lives. They give her a bedroom upstairs that contains another smaller room with a door, bare except for some old trunks, called the “shed chamber.”

Mr. Bowles leaves on a business trip a week after Nora is hired. The day that he leaves, a young girl, Annie, arrives at the house late in the evening. She was the last hired help that the Bowles family had before Nora came on, and was let go because she “was careless and saucy.”

Annie says that she left something in the shed chamber and asks if she can retrieve it. Nora senses something is off and quietly follows the girl upstairs. Through the keyhole of the shed chamber door, Nora sees Annie open the window, let in an “evil, coarse” man, and hide him in the largest trunk.

‘Courage, Brave Girl!’

The moment Annie leaves the house, Nora’s “strength seems to come back with a leap, and she knows what she has to do.” She bolts upstairs, locks the largest trunk, and runs back downstairs to Mrs. Bowles.

She has a plan. With composure and calm, Nora asks Mrs. Bowles if she may go for a walk in the beautiful moonlight.

Nora knows that by trying to stop this evil man, she puts herself in great danger. If he escapes, he will harm her and the Bowles family. Yet she does not worry about her own safety and wants to do everything to protect defenseless Mrs. Bowles and the children.

Through Nora’s exemplary bravery, Richards shows, as Eleanor Roosevelt says: “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” In times of fear and dread, we can still do the right thing. Filled with love and hope, we can find the courage to face our darkest fears as Nora does and free ourselves from its paralyzing force.

Author of "The Shed Chamber" Laura E. Richards, circa 1902, The Critic. (Public Domain)

In 1917, the author won a Pulitzer Prize shared with her sisters for a biography of their mother, Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the words for “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”