“A White Heron” (1886)
Sarah Orne Jewett
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
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Born in South Berwick, Maine, daughter of
obstetrician
Inspired by Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s Main novel
The Pearl of Orr’s Island (1862), she began to write
regionalist fiction about coastal Maine
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Regionalism: branch of American realism representing
distinctive characters, dialects, lifestyles and landscapes of
various non-urban sections of U.S.
Her work was published and encouraged by William
Dean Howells, editor of Atlantic Monthly
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
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Her most famous work: The Country of the Pointed
Firs (1896), a collected of interconnected sketches
about coastal Maine
From 1881 to her death in 1909, Jewett had close
domestic relationship with Annie Adams Fields,
widow of editor James T. Fields: they had a “Boston
marriage”
Relationships between mothers/daughters and
among women figure prominently in her fiction. After
the Civil War, which killed many men, American
women faced new demands and opportunities to
form relationships and communities
Nature vs. Civilization
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“A White Heron” sets up a conflict between
nature and civilization through the
relationship between Sylvia and the young
man
In this story, nature and civilization are
ambiguous categories, mutually
interdependent
Sylvia
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Latin sylva=forest
Raised 8 yrs in “crowded manufacturing
town”: “it seemed as if she never had been
alive at all before she came to live at the
farm” with her grandmother (¶2)
Quiet, “Afraid of folks” (¶3)
She knows the land, the birds, the squirrels,
etc.; she tames and feeds them (¶16)
Young Man
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A “sportsman”: nature as sport (¶26)
An “ornithologist”: kills, stuffs, and preserves
birds (¶20): collection & classification
Hunting some rare birds for 5 yrs—including
white heron, “queer tall white bird with soft
feathers and long thin legs” (¶22)
Loud: “a boy’s whistle, determined, and
somewhat aggressive” (¶5)
Gallant, well-mannered (like a knight)
White Heron (Snowy Egret)
Young Man vs. Sylvia: Issues
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Speaking: “Speak up and tell me what your
name is” (¶7); “The sound of her own
unquestioned voice would have terrified her”
(¶27)
Money: Young man offers $10 for showing
him white heron (big money for poor rural
folks)
Young Man & Sylvia: Issues
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Violence: “Sylvia would have liked him vastly
better without his gun; she could not
understand why he killed the very birds he
seemed to like so much” (¶26)
Love: “Some premonition of that great power
stirred and swayed these young creatures”
(¶26)
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Sylvia thinks him “charming and delightful”
young man could take home not only the birds but
Sylvia too
The Pine Tree: Central Symbol
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Survivor: “the last of its generation. . . . the
woodchoppers who had felled its mates
were dead and gone long ago ” (¶28).
Beacon: “landmark for sea and shore
miles and miles away”
Prospect: “see the ocean”
Mystery: “dark boughs that the wind
always stirred”
Practical Tool: Locate the white heron
Climbing the Tree: Symbolic Journey
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Struggle associated with birds: “her bare feet
and fingers, that pinched and held like bird's
claws to the monstrous ladder reaching up”
(¶31); “the sharp dry twigs caught and held
her and scratched her like angry talons” (¶32)
Transition: 1) white oak; 2) pine tree:
“dangerous pass from one tree to the other”
(¶31): Symbolism?
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Sylvia has already taken the daring step from
town to farm
Climbing the Tree: Symbolic Journey
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World vision: “like the great main-mast of the
voyaging earth” (¶33); “truly it was a vast and
awesome world” (¶34)
Identification: “This determined spark of
human spirit. . . . The old pine must have
loved his new dependent. . . . the brave,
beating heart of the solitary gray-eyed child”
(¶33)
Discovery of Heron
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Male heron rises from marsh, perches on
pine tree, calls back to mate in nest, in dead
hemlock tree
Disturbed by cat-birds, the heron returns to
his nest
“She knows his secret now” (¶36)
Sylvia descends
Climax: To speak or not to speak?
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the splendid moment has come to speak of
the dead hemlock-tree by the green marsh”
(¶38)
“No, she must keep silence! . . . Sylvia
cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron’s
secret and give its life away” (¶40)
Sylvia’s Choice (¶40-41)
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Silence, rather than speaking
Poverty, rather than money
Loneliness, rather than love
Loyalty to nature rather than to a man
Peace, rather than violence
Nature, rather than the “great world” (¶40)
Is Sylvia’s choice natural?
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Consider that Nature is
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Loud: “shouting cat-birds” (¶36)
Sexual: heron has mate, plumes feathers (¶35); in
contrast, Mrs. Tilley’s house is “like a hermitage”
(¶14)
Violent: cat “fat with young robins” (¶3)
Cosmopolitan: the tree connects Sylvia to the
“great world”
Conclusion
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Sylvia is not really a child of nature, but
cosmopolitan—a child of the town
Her loyalty to nature is a sophisticated
choice, not an innocent one—comes through
experience and suffering
Paradoxically, her loyalty and devotion to
nature are cultural rather than natural
Conclusion
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Sylvia’s devotion to nature parallels, on a
different level, the young man’s devotion to
nature—transplanting cultural loyalties (to
marriage, science, etc.) back to nature
“A White Heron” illustrates the idea of 19thcentury American essayist and poet Ralph
Waldo Emerson that nature and humanity
complement or complete one another