Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts on October 31, 1852, to Eleanor Lothrop and Warren Edward Wilkins, who originally baptized her "Mary Ella".

[4][5] During a visit to Metuchen, New Jersey in 1892, she met Dr. Charles Manning Freeman, a non-practicing medical doctor seven years younger than she.

[4] The couple built a home in Metuchen, where Freeman became a local celebrity for her writing, despite having occasionally published satirical fictional representations of her neighbors.

[4] In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Despite continuous pressure from her mother to participate in domestic chores, no amount of discipline could pull Mary away from her reading to the reality of hated kitchen work.

It is clear that a growing tension between Mary and her mother centered on her resistance to undertaking the tasks expected of a "good girl.

While her sister Anna willingly undertook domestic work and increasingly met her parents' expectations, Mary quietly began to reject them.

During the time which she was writing, she did this in nonconventional ways; for example, she diverged from making her female characters weak and in need of help which was a common trope in literature.

[8] Through characters such as Louisa in her short story: “A New England Nun,” Freeman challenges contemporary ideas concerning female roles, values, and relationships in society.