Sarah Orne Jewett: Chronicler of Rural Maine and Local Color Pioneer

Mrs. Todd never by any chance gave warning over night of her great projects and adventures by sea and land. She first came to an understanding with the primal forces of nature, and never trusted to any preliminary promise of good weather, but examined the day for herself in its infancy.
The Country of the Pointed Firs

A Literary Reputation Built on Deliberate Observation. Willa Cather, who met Sarah Orne Jewett in 1908, a year before Jewett's death, would later write an introduction to Jewett's stories in which she expressed her admiration in the highest terms: "if I were asked to name three American books which have the possibility of a long, long life, I would say at once, The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn, and The Country of the Pointed Firs. I can think of no others that confront time and change so seriously" (qtd. in Silverthorne 10–11). Cather was not alone in recognizing Jewett's accomplishment. William Dean Howells praised her work; John Greenleaf Whittier was a close friend and admirer; Henry James described The Country of the Pointed Firs as Jewett's "beautiful little quantum of achievement" (qtd. in Silverthorne 171). Considered by many to be the most accomplished of America's "local color" writers, Jewett also earned comparison with Henry David Thoreau for her close attention to detail and her devotion to the natural world. As with Thoreau, Jewett's regional orientation was not a source of limitation, but rather a means of concentrating attention, enabling the mind to reflect on the broad implications of lives lived deliberately. Her choice to write about average people and give voice to their daily experience situates her in the company of realist writers such as Kate Chopin and Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, who also took a great interest in the trials and triumphs of independent women.

Jewett continues to attract attention today not only because she was a great champion of women's freedom but also because she was an early advocate of environmental conservation, who expressed a deep appreciation for what is gained and lost through the process of historical change.

Early Life in South Berwick, Maine. Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett was born September 3, 1849, in South Berwick, Maine, a village located on the Piscataqua River, which runs along the southern portion of the state's border with New Hampshire. Her family was financially secure, benefiting from the shipping fortune generated by her paternal grandfather, Theodore Furber Jewett, and the successful medical practice established by her maternal grandfather, Dr. William Perry. Theodore Herman Jewett, Sarah's father, also a medical doctor, met Sarah's mother, Frances Perry, when he moved to Exeter, Maine, in order to enter a medical practice with Dr. Perry.

Sarah, as she became known, was the second of three daughters; her sister Mary was born in 1847 and Caroline in 1855. The family moved from Exeter shortly after Mary's birth and settled in an elegant colonial house the Jewett grandfather had purchased in the center of South Berwick. This is the house in which Sarah was born and where she would die of a stroke in 1909 at the age of 59. The natural beauty of South Berwick, the tidal estuary, and the village life lived close to the ocean would surface in Sarah's later writing. She would also incorporate a pronounced respect for past generations engendered by a childhood spent in the presence of grandmothers and grandfathers with long-standing familial ties to the region.

Formative Influences: Father, Nature, and Books. Sarah was exceptionally close to her father, who frequently took her with him on his medical rounds. One reason for these excursions was Sarah's struggle with arthritis, an ailment that would plague her throughout her life and periodically prevented her from attending school during childhood. On these trips with her father, Sarah became acquainted with local flora and fauna as well as the people of rural Maine. Her father always encouraged her to be attentive to her surroundings, and she credited him with offering advice that would shape her life as a writer: "Don't try to write about people and things," he admonished her. "Tell them just as they are" (qtd. in Silverthorne 35).

For the whole of her life, Jewett delighted in the outdoors and took as much pleasure in nature as she did in books. She was an avid hiker, loved horseback riding, and was adept at handling boats; in the winter she skated, sledded, and enjoyed sleigh rides. Even though she suffered with arthritis, Jewett enjoyed vigorous exercise and rapidly developed into an attractive girl whose good looks were widely acknowledged.

Education and Early Reading. Her formal education began in 1855 at the Misses Raynes' School, where she studied until age 12, when she entered Berwick Academy, from which she graduated in 1865, the final year of the Civil War. Sarah's youthful temperament was not well suited to regimented study, though she did value her education and soon became a voracious reader. Her favorite authors from this period included Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Gaskell, all British authors who wrote brilliantly about the characters and settings that they knew intimately. The book that spoke to her most powerfully at this time was Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1862 The Pearl of Orr's Island, a novel about island life off the Maine coast that led her to imagine that the people and places she knew best might provide material for her own writing.

First Publications and the Search for Voice. Jewett's formal education concluded in 1865, when she left Berwick Academy at age 16. Her first publication occurred just three years later with the appearance of "Jenny Garrow's Lovers," a short story printed in the January 18, 1868, issue of the Flag of Our Union. The plot is full of melodramatic twists and turns and improbable events that the more mature writer would replace with the realist's eye for accurate description and attention to the drama of everyday life.

That Jewett possessed abundant talent was evident from an early age, but she would require time to discover her true subject and voice. After three failed attempts, she succeeded in having a short story published in 1869 in one of her favorite magazines, the Atlantic Monthly. Her story, "Mr. Bruce," was accepted by William Dean Howells, who at that time served as assistant to James T. Fields, a figure who was well known in the literary world and was married to Annie Fields, Jewett's future friend and confidant. The story itself is highly artificial, lacking the grace and ease of Jewett's later writing.

During this period, Jewett's letters and diary entries record her lack of confidence in her abilities and express uncertainty about the course her life would take. Thanks to the affluence of her family, Sarah felt no particular pressure to marry, and though she and her sisters led active social lives that included ample contact with young men, there is no mention of romance. Perhaps in an effort to establish a greater sense of purpose, Sarah and Mary were both baptized and confirmed in St. John's Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on November 27, 1870.

In spite of her lack of confidence, Jewett continued to write and in January 1870 published her short story "The Girl with the Cannon Dresses" in the Riverside Magazine for Young People. This was in at least three respects a breakthrough publication: It was the first work she did not publish under a pen name; it marked her first treatment of nature as a nurturing presence; and it included the theme of country versus city. Though she continued to struggle with insecurity, Jewett began to see with increasing clarity that she wrote best and with greatest passion when describing the simple but admirable lives of the country people she had known and loved growing up in rural Maine.

The Boston Literary Circle andDeephaven. As she became more immersed in her writing and entered more fully into the community of writers in and around Boston, Jewett formed close friendships with leading literary figures, many of whom would have a profound influence on her writing and her personal life. This group included James Russell Lowell, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and Horace B. Scudder, as well as Fields and Howells. Sarah visited Howells and his family at their home in Boston and at their summer cottage at Kittery Point, not far from South Berwick. Howells, who was a major figure in the realist movement, encouraged Jewett to concentrate on simple plots surrounding the lives of the people who inhabited the rural settings she knew best.

After accepting several of her sketches for the Atlantic, Howells urged her to produce a collection of stories. Jewett took his advice and in April 1877 published her first book, Deephaven. Whether or not the work fits together as a true novel or more accurately functions as a closely linked series of sketches remains a matter of critical debate. Formal considerations aside, the collection won Whittier's enthusiastic approval and was generally well received by critics. This volume was followed in 1878 by Play Days: A Book of Stories for Children.

Annie Fields and a "Boston Marriage." In the meantime Jewett developed a friendship with Whittier that would last for the remainder of his life, and she met the woman who would be her closest lifelong associate, Annie Adams Fields. Sarah and Annie met in December 1879 at a reception for Oliver Wendell Holmes. Annie was at that time the devoted wife of James T. Fields, sharing his dedication to literature and the arts and using much of her time in assisting his efforts in the publishing world.

Their home at 148 Charles Street in Boston was a gathering place for literary lights and quickly became a favorite stopping point for Jewett, who was close to both James and Annie. When James unexpectedly died in 1881, Annie was devastated. Jewett, who was still in mourning since her father's death in 1878, felt immediate sympathy and began a series of long visits to 148 Charles Street. During these extended visits the two women discovered a mutual compatibility that proved a great source of comfort and happiness for each. Together they traveled in 1882 to Europe, where they met Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and during which time their friendship deepened.

After their return from this trip they established a pattern of living together in Boston during the winter season and in Maine during much of the summer. When she was not with Annie, Sarah spent the majority of her time at her family home in South Berwick, where Annie became a frequent visitor. The precise nature of Jewett's relationship with Annie Fields has excited a great deal of scholarly conjecture, but research has yet to establish any firm conclusion as to the sexual dimension of their intimacy.

Jewett took all of her friendships seriously and was known to write "as many as thirty letters in a day" (Silverthorne 105), so it is no surprise that she would refer to Annie in passionate terms that reflect deep affection. Ultimately, they entered a partnership consistent with what was referred to at the time as a "Boston marriage," according to which women shared households and entered intimate relationships but were not necessarily sexually involved. Whatever the basis of their intimate life was, both women thrived, and they were immensely popular in Boston society.

The Country Doctor and A Marsh Island. Jewett began work on The Country Doctor, her first book deliberately conceived as a novel, in 1882. The work is strongly autobiographical in its incorporation of Jewett's childhood experience of visiting country patients with her father. She modeled the kindly Dr. Leslie on her father, and her protagonist, Nan Prince, who becomes a country doctor, was an outgrowth of her own personality.

When the book was published in 1884, it was compared to Howells's novel Doctor Breen's Practice and generally received positive reviews, though some critics complained that it was too devoted to detail and overly concerned with moral implications. Jewett herself was very fond of the book, perhaps because it contained so much of her and because in it she was able to develop one of her central motifs: the contrast between urban and rural values. While she was completing work on The Country Doctor, Jewett produced another novel, A Marsh Island, which appeared in 1885 through serial publication in the Atlantic.

A White Heron and Critical Acclaim. In the following year Jewett published her most popular short story, "The White Heron," along with eight other stories in a collection titled A White Heron and Other Stories. This work drew Jewett critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic and in many ways marked her emergence as a major writer. The title story is widely appreciated today for its skillful construction, its promotion of environmental conservation, and its feminist assertion of female autonomy.

The Country of the Pointed Firs: Masterpiece. From this point on, Jewett published widely in literary journals and produced numerous additional collections. The work generally considered her masterpiece, The Country of the Pointed Firs, was published serially in the Atlantic in 1896. As was the case with Deephaven, critical opinion was mixed as to whether or not the work should be considered a novel or a sequence of linked sketches. Critical assessments of the work's quality were, however, uniformly glowing. From the time of its first appearance to the present moment, scholars and critics have praised Jewett's skillful depiction of New England rural life.

Her unnamed female narrator travels from the city to the village of Dunnet Landing, where she rents a room from Mrs. Almira Todd, a widow whose presence informs most of what follows. In Mrs. Todd we discover a woman whose unusual strength of character grows from an intimate knowledge of the natural world and close relations to neighbors and remaining family members. Her presence enables Jewett to explore the timeless quality of primary human traits that she presents as glimpses of the mythic past while also examining the difficult challenges people face as they confront historical change.

After the publication of The Country of the Pointed Firs, Jewett wrote four additional stories set in Dunnet Landing. Of these, "The Foreigner" is generally considered to be the most accomplished. In it we learn how Mrs. Todd befriends a French Catholic woman who feels excluded from village life and in return learns even more about local plants and herbs. As in many of Jewett's best works, this story pivots on the power of female friendship.

Later Years, Honors, and Death. In the years following publication of The Country of the Pointed Firs, Jewett's reputation continued to grow, and she enjoyed increased public recognition. One of the most meaningful acknowledgments occurred in 1901, when Jewett became the first woman ever to be awarded an honorary doctor of letters by Bowdoin College, her father's alma mater.

Despite having struggled with arthritis and rheumatism throughout her life, Jewett managed to live a vigorous, physically active life up to her 53rd birthday in 1902, when she was thrown from a carriage she was driving. She would never fully recover from the injuries she sustained to her head and spine and found it extremely difficult if not impossible to write. She remained mentally alert, however, and when Willa Cather visited her and Annie Fields at 148 Charles Street in 1908, Cather was impressed by Jewett's poise and wit.

The next blow to Jewett's health came in March 1909, when she suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed. With the beginning of warmer weather, she traveled to the family home in South Berwick, where she experienced a brain hemorrhage and passed away at 6:30 in the evening of June 24.

Enduring Legacy. In 1968 Mary Ellen Chase, another Maine writer, would affirm Cather's high regard for Jewett by writing in her introduction to The Country of the Pointed Firs that Jewett's "sensitivity to people and places" sets her "apart not only from all other Maine writers, but from many, if not most writers of all time and of many a place," making "her in short, the deeply desired, if unreachable, model for us all" (xxx).