What is the theme in Life in the Iron Mills, and Other Stories by Rebecca Harding Davis?

Another theme is duty versus desire. Hester, in "The Wife's Story," believes she has a great talent writing music as well as singing. Hester has recently gotten married and loves her husband but is overwhelmed with her husband's five children and an infant of her own. Hester longs for home and the ability to spend her days writing music. Hester continues her music in secret, writing when everyone else is asleep, completing an opera she believes deserves to be performed on the great stages of the world. Hester sneaks this opera out of the house and gives it to a producer with an offer to sing one of the parts should the opera be produced. However, news that her family is about to move out of New York forces Hester to make a choice.