Literary Analysis of Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs

Structural Coherence and Narrative Framework. The 21 chapters that make up The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) possess an undeniable coherence established through the consistent voice of the unnamed narrator and Jewett’s skillful management of primary themes and central characters. Critics have tended to view this work as Jewett’s masterpiece because in it she takes to fruition her multiple gifts as a writer, not the least of which was her sensitivity to the landscape and inhabitants of New England. Whether or not the book qualifies as a novel, however, will continue to be a matter of debate largely because the work does not present a single plot that develops chapter by chapter, leading to multiple crises that culminate in climax and resolution. Instead, the book reads more as a sequence of episodes or encounters that make a pronounced impression on the narrator. For this reason, perhaps, it makes sense to approach this work as a love story, one in which the object of love is the rural seaport of Dunnet Landing.

The narrator urges such a perception in the opening pages when she observes that truly knowing "a village like this and its surroundings, . . . is like becoming acquainted with a single person" (Jewett, Country 1). When she immediately extends the village-as-person metaphor, admitting that, as with people, "falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift" (1–2), we begin to wonder whether what we have in store is the intimate disclosure of such a love. This is indeed what we get, but it is not the interior record of the lover's journey of discovery; rather, the narrative presents scenes that leave us in the position of explaining what it is about them that provokes the narrator's admiration.

In our initial encounter with Jewett’s narrator, she is described as "a lover of Dunnet Landing returning to find the unchanged shores of the pointed firs" (2). We see her from the outside, as the "single passenger landed upon the steamboat wharf," and we join the "fine crowd of spectators" that follows her "with subdued excitement". When she admits us into the interior of her experience, as she does in chapter 2 and continues to do for the rest of the book, it is with the understanding that every detail is already dear to her heart, and that we are trusted to share her affection. In our efforts not to betray that trust, we must discover the value she perceives in the experiences she describes, seeing with our own eyes the beauty she points to but does not explain.

The little we know of the narrator is that she is a writer, and this fact contributes to our efforts to account for her descriptions. We learn that she was "bound" to complete a "long piece of writing" that she cannot seem to give her complete attention because she is so captivated by the sights and sounds of village life (6). She confesses that when she listens to her landlady, Mrs. Almira Todd, she does so "with an idle pen in my hand" and attempts to escape the distraction: "I resolutely fled temptation, and walked out past the fragrant green garden and up the dusty road" (9). But her efforts are futile; she admits that for her "it was impossible not to listen," and even in the act of fleeing, her attention is drawn to the "fragrant green garden" and the "dusty road". In a last effort to complete her writing and close herself off from the world around her, she rents a schoolhouse empty for the summer, and for a time she feels "most businesslike" in her single-minded dedication. Yet even here she acknowledges that when "a sheep-bell tinkled near by," her "wandering wits" were called to it and her "sentences failed to catch these lovely summer cadences" (14–15). At last she forgoes all efforts to write and instead yields to the world that intrudes on her imagination and that she is unable to express fully through the artificiality of writing.

Realist Aesthetics and Female Empowerment. All of this is to say that Jewett structures her opening chapters so that we want to know what it is that so fascinates the narrator and feel relieved when we learn that the narrator will simply give us the world around her instead of attempting to contain it in her writing. This is Jewett’s way of writing the author out of her story so that we learn to view what follows as what really exists, free of the constraints of literary form. Doing so defines Jewett as a realist writer, who strives to present the world in objective terms so that we see humanity and the natural world as they actually are rather than as we would like them to be or as society tells us they should be. One aim of the story is to illuminate the trials and triumphs of ordinary New Englanders, so that even as we discover what is best about them, we do so with knowledge of the hardships they must endure. The characters who appear on Jewett’s pages for this reason gain what beauty they possess in the face of many struggles.

Jewett’s strong women characters, such as Mrs. Todd and her mother, Mrs. Blackett, demonstrate their strength by overcoming disappointments and rising above the loneliness and isolation that are so often close at hand. They achieve peace with the natural world not because it lifts them out of suffering or suddenly yields transcendent moments, but because they respect its power, regard it closely, and savor whatever delights it offers. Jewett’s male characters also struggle but frequently exhibit the crippling effects of lost love or failed ambition that take them out of the present and prevent them from being grounded in themselves and their circumstances, the way the central women characters are.

Mrs. Todd is perhaps the most powerful female presence in Pointed Firs, and we are given insight into her character early in the book. As chapter 2 concludes, the narrator tells us that the older woman is a widow, who in her youth "had loved one who was far above her" (7). Mrs. Todd herself explains that "he come of high family, an' my lot was plain an' hard-workin'" (8). She does not bemoan her social position or begrudge her lover the life he has led; she simply admits that "them feelin's comes back when you think you've done with 'em, as sure as spring comes with the year". We later learn that Mrs. Todd was happy with her husband, Nathan, who died before knowing that her heart belonged to another. She does not deny that her life has included sorrows, but she does not linger over them; rather, she absorbs what life holds out to her and is perhaps for that reason described as "a very large woman" who has managed to draw sustenance even from hardship (2).

It is also fitting that Mrs. Todd is an herbalist, whose broad knowledge of local plants enables her to survive by selling spruce beer and herbal remedies. All these facets of her character seem to gather around her at the conclusion of chapter 2, where Jewett invests her with the timeless mystery of the ancient past that she embodies in the present: "She stood in the centre of a braided rug, and its rings of black and gray seemed to circle about her feet in the dim light. Her height and massiveness in the low room gave her the look of a huge sibyl, while the strange fragrance of the mysterious herb blew in from her little garden" (8). Here the imagery of circles reinforces her timelessness, as if to say that she is the most recent incarnation of a female figure whose presence circulates through all the ages, while reference to the sibyl gives her an oracular power here linked to her intimate knowledge of the natural world.

Masculine Liminality and Literary Critique. The male characters are less impressive, though each in his own way possesses admirable qualities. Captain Littlepage is the first male we meet, and his name expresses his limited though significant appeal. We quickly learn that he is a dedicated reader who developed a particular interest in John Milton’s Paradise Lost during his many years at sea. This turns out to be a key to his character, and we begin to see that he is a person whose understanding of the world is perhaps overly filtered through the written word and seafaring lore. His initial words are a quotation from Paradise Lost, which triggers the narrator's recollection of Mrs. Todd's observation that the good captain "had overset his mind with too much reading" (17). The narrator herself states that he looks "as if he had suffered from loneliness and misapprehension". A few pages after this, a swallow hotly pursued by a kingbird flies into the schoolhouse where the two are conversing and bangs against the walls before escaping, "but Captain Littlepage took no notice whatever of the flurry" (19). Unlike the narrator, who cannot hold the real world at bay in order to lose herself in writing, the captain is insulated from that world by the heightened language he has absorbed from others.

As a consequence, he is quick to condemn the younger generation as small minded: "There's no large-minded way of thinking now," he tells us; "the worst have got to be the best and rule everything; we're all turned upside down and going back year by year" (21). His misapprehension, as it turns out, is his belief that life can be lived on the epic scale conveyed in the works of Milton and William Shakespeare, so that all else pales in significance. It is difficult not to imagine that Jewett is poking fun at the romantic imagination, as expressed through Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous transparent eyeball passage in the opening pages of Nature, where he states that during moments of transcendence the concerns of daily life are reduced to mere trifles. Captain Littlepage’s transcendent moment takes the form of a story he was told by an old Scotsman he boarded with while shipwrecked and recovering from a fever in the Far North. The story is about a town in the Arctic that serves as "a kind of waiting-place between this world and the next" and promises to unlock the secret of the life to come (24). Captain Littlepage believes that he "chanced to learn of one of the greatest discoveries that man has ever made," and this knowledge casts the rest of his life in shadows; his attention remains steadfastly riveted on the "great exploit" to take place "some o' these days" (27). Mrs. Todd's reflection that "he used to be a beautiful man" effectively captures the way a noble life can be misdirected by literature and romantic tales distanced from actual experience (29).

Johnny Bowden seems to embody the admirable male, keeping his feet firmly planted on the ground while submitting to the authority of Mrs. Todd and happily uniting his own practical interests to those of the powerful women who surround him. We meet Johnny when he joins the narrator and Mrs. Todd as the two women make the boat trip to Green Island, where Mrs. Todd's mother lives. Mrs. Todd is clearly in charge, commanding the narrator to "let me do things my way" and declaring that Johnny is an acceptable companion because he is her "cousin's son" and "mother'll like to have him come". Mrs. Todd also points out that Johnny will "be down to the herrin' weirs all the time we're there, anyway" and will not present a burden (32). "We don't want to carry no men folks havin' to be considered every minute an' takin' up all of our time". The subordination of male power clearly invoked in this language is further reinforced as the dory pulls away from the wharf and a male voice advises Mrs. Todd that her boat is "lo'ded bad" and "won't never get out to Green Island" (33). Mrs. Todd responds by dismissing the male speaker's judgment with such force that he walks "indignantly away".

Matriarchal Authority and Communal Harmony. The events that take place on Green Island forcefully illuminate Jewett’s interest in the harmonious exercise of matriarchal authority. This is a theme that she has already introduced through the narrator's friendship with Mrs. Todd and that she will return to with particular force in later chapters when she presents the Bowden family reunion. Jewett’s aim in these chapters is to communicate the beneficial influence of female wisdom, and readers must decide whether her doing so results in the displacement of male power or an effort to balance the social scales that have long favored patriarchy. In the Green Island chapters, readers see how men are relegated to the background so that the joys of female sociality might be more fully explored. Mrs. Todd's brother, William, is for this reason cast as unusually shy and predisposed to hover on the margins, much as Johnny Bowden does. This enables Jewett to focus our attention on the women, especially Mrs. Todd's 86-year-old mother, Mrs. Blackett, who is introduced as eternally youthful and warm hearted: "She was a delightful little person . . . with bright eyes and an affectionate air of expectation like a child on holiday. You felt as if Mrs. Blackett were an old and dear friend before you let go her cordial hand" (36). We soon learn that Mrs. Blackett is a goddess of hospitality whose ready sympathy enables her to anticipate her guest's every need. In her we are reminded of Rachel Halliday, the Quaker matron of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin, who also makes her home a version of heaven on earth. As the day on Green Island concludes, the narrator acknowledges her deep contentment: "It was impossible not to wish to stay on forever at Green Island, and I could not help saying so" (52).

The theme of matriarchal harmony achieves its fullest expression in the journey to the Bowden family reunion and the reunion itself, during which the narrator "came near to feeling like a true Bowden" and therefore a member of the extended family over which Mrs. Blackett presides (110). Jewett frames this momentous event as an outpouring of primal energies that binds the simple country folk to the ancient past while enabling them to express a nobility of character that lifts them above their humble circumstances. The day begins with Mrs. Todd's carefully examining "the day for herself in its infancy," coming "to an understanding with the primal forces of nature," and concluding that the signs are propitious (83). After Mrs. Blackett arrives, they begin the wagon trip up country to the family seat, encountering people along the way who greet them with such affection that the narrator compares their journey to "a golden chain of love and dependence" that links "the far island" where Mrs. Blackett lives to "these scattered farms" (90). Once they reach the old Bowden house, the celebration assumes a ritualistic pattern described as the outward expression of a timeless human impulse: "We were no more a New England family celebrating its own existence and simple progress; we carried the tokens and inheritance of all such households from which this had descended, and were only the latest of our line" (100).

At this point, the family forms a procession to the grove, where a feast awaits them and Mrs. Blackett naturally takes her position at the front. In this environment—where nature and human conduct harmoniously unite—the inner self is free to blossom. Mrs. Todd appears "as alert and gay as a girl," and the narrator reflects on how often "a narrow set of circumstances had caged a fine able character and held it captive" (105, 107). Structuring the scene in this way enables Jewett to incorporate the realist writer’s belief that people are shaped by nature and external social forces while also suggesting that the acceptance of matriarchal influence is essential to the realization of human potential.

Pedagogical Prompts and Discussion Topics. The primary pedagogical questions generated by the source text for academic review and student writing include:
1st step: Describe the ways Jewett presents Captain Littlepage as a man who lives too much in his mind and fails to acknowledge the natural world and the lives of those who surround him. Do you think that Jewett creates this character as a critique of the romantic imagination that Emerson presents in the transparent eyeball passage that appears near the beginning of Nature? How are Jewett’s aims as a realist writer realized through her development of Captain Littlepage?

2nd step: Look closely at the male characters in this book and compile a list of characteristics that you see Jewett presenting as most desirable in a man. Be sure to consider Johnny Bowden and Captain Littlepage, but also take into account the Reverend Mr. Dimmick and Elijah Tilley.

3rd step: Make a comparison of the scenes that Jewett sets on Green Island at Mrs. Blackett’s home with the chapter titled "The Quaker Settlement" in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Pay particular attention to the parallels linking Mrs. Blackett to Rachel Halliday. Then construct an argument in which you make the case that Jewett was or was not influenced by Stowe’s earlier work.

4th step: Explain why you think Jewett chooses not to name her narrator and why she presents her as an outsider who stays for the summer months only.