SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909)

   Because she was born in Berwick, Maine, just a hop, skip and jump from Boston and came from an upper-middle class family, Jewett found that her status as a woman and "provincial" was not a permanent obstacle to full participation in the marketplace of high culture. As a young adult, she developed ties to a very strong female community. This amazing circle constituted a powerful network (available soon) which enabled women like Jewett to develop full-fledged careers, even amidst a conservaative social environment which frowned upon proper "ladies" engaging in activities outside the home. This network has been the source of controversy between feminist and gay scholars because at the core of her female network, Jewett enjoyed a life-long 'romantic friendship' with Annie Fields, widow of the publishing magnate, James T. Fields (the publishing house Ticknor & Fields is still with us as Houghton-Mifflin).
   Because Jewett is probably among the best-known of the 19th-century regionalists, her canon has often been used to represent the genre as a whole. Scholars frequently characterize Jewett's work, and the writings of regionalists in general, as nostalgic and escapist. There is much to be said on the topic, but I would like to call attention to tales which Jewett wrote about the Irish (an immigrant group whose presence in Boston and New York was the subject of concern to the region's older residents) and also about the post-war South. These stories serve as a reminder that her perspective --one she shared with the other Anglo-American women in her female network--was in some places modestly enlightened, in others, limited by the spirit of the times.

    Sarah Orne Jewett was prolific, and her writing continues to attract new readers. Currently available on the web are the following short stories:

1. "In Dark New England Days" (October 1890)
2. "Decoration Day" (June 1892)
3. "A Dunnet Shepherdess" (1899)
4. "The Foreigner" (1899)
5. "The Gloucester Mother" (October 1908)
6. "The Landscape Chamber" (1887)
7. "From a Mournful Villager (1881)
8. "The Passing of Sister Barsett" (May 1893)
9. "The Queen's Twin" (1898)
10. "Going to Shrewsbury" (1889)
11. "The White White Rose Road" (Sept 1889)
12. "William's Wedding" (1910)

13. New York University has provided a summary and short commetary on Jewett's novel A Country Doctor

   Jewett's best work was based on the Maine countryside, whose people and places she knew intimately and loved dearly throughout her entire life. Just to entice you, and give you a sense of her writing if you haven not already had the pleasure, here is a snippet from chapter two of her classic The Country of the Pointed Firs:

...Mrs. Todd was an ardent lover of herbs, both wild and tame, and the sea-breezes blew into the low end-window of the house laden with not only sweet-brier and sweet-mary, but balm and sage and borage and mint, wormwood and southernwood. If Mrs. Todd had occasion to step into the far corner of her herb plot, she trod heavily upon thyme, and made its fragrant presence known with all the rest. Being a very large person, her full skirts brushed and bent almost every slender stalk that her feet missed. You could always tell when she was stepping about there, even when you were half awake in the morning, and learned to know, in the course of a few weeks' experience, in exactly which corner of the garden she might be.

...

I do not know what herb of the night it was that used sometimes to send out a penetrating odor late in the evening, after the dew had fallen, and the moon was high, and the cool air came up from the sea. Then Mrs. Todd would feel that she must talk to somebody, and I was only too glad to listen. We both fell under the spell, and she either stood outside the window, or made an errand to my sitting-room, and told, it might be very commonplace news of the day, or, as happened one misty summer night, all that lay deepest in her heart. It was in this way that I came to know that she had loved one who was far above her.

...for the rest of Country...

"Nineteenth-century Regional Writing in the United States" is the work of Dottie Webb. For suggestions, complaints, cattle-rustling schemes or gossiping over the fence in neighborly fashion, send your e-correspondence to dawebb@traverse.lib.mi.us

URL: http://www.traverse.com/people/dot/jewett.html

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