Sarah Orne Jewett  (1849 - 1909)

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The Country of the Pointed Firs : And Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett, Anita Shreve (Introduction)  

In 1896, at the age of forty-seven, Sarah Orne Jewett published this classic novel of a female writer looking for seclusion and inspiration in the coastal town of Dunnet Landing, Maine. Returning to the women and men of small New England towns for the accompanying collection of short fiction, this remarkable volume weaves a colorful and moving tapestry of the grand complexities, joys, and beauties of life.

Modeled in part on Flaubert's sketches of life in provincial France, this collection of stories offers a richly detailed portrait of a seaport on the Maine coast as seen through the eyes of a summer visitor. Against evocative imagery of the sky, the sea, and the earth itself, Jewett celebrates the friendships shared by the town's women, capturing the spirit of community that sustains the declining town.

"The young student of American Literature in far distant years to come will take up this book and say 'a masterpiece.'"-- Willa Cather

Sarah Orne Jewett : Reconstructing Gender by Margaret Roman

In this critical study, "Roman argues that one theme colors almost every short story and novel by the turn-of-the-century American author: each person, regardless of sex, must break free of the restrictive, polar-opposite norms of behavior traditionally assigned to men and women by a patriarchal society. That society, as seen from Jewett's perspective during the late Victorian era, was one in which a competitive, active man dominates a passive, emotional woman. . . . {Roman argues that Jewett}, through her personal quest for freedom and through the various characters she created, strove to eliminate the necessity for rigid and narrowly defined male-female roles and relationships."

Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project

This site by Terry Heller at Coe College is dedicated to putting all of Jewett's texts online.  The site currently includes selected stories from various collections, notes, and pictures.

Interactive Hypertext of The Country of the Pointed Firs

Highlights of this version include accompanying interpretive and instructional materials and a "modifiable" text that allows readers to annotate passages and create discussion forums.

Jewett and the Ghost Story

Essay by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Excerpt:

"The Foreigner," one of Sarah Orne Jewett's finest short stories, today recognized as an important adjunct to the American classic The Country of the Pointed Firs, remained uncollected for over sixty years. It languished in the August, 1900 issue of The Atlantic Monthly until David Bonnell Green included it in The World of Dunnet Landing published by the University of Nebraska Press in 1962. Afterward it was added to the Penguin Books & W. W. Norton editions of Pointed Firs, besides its inclusion in Professor Bendixen's Haunted Women in 1985. This story, so long in obscurity, is today admitted into the ranks of Jewett's most important stories...

Sarah Orne Jewett

From "Nineteenth-century Regional Writing in the United States" is the work of Dottie Webb.

Excerpt:

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 which enabled women like Jewett to develop full-fledged careers, even amidst a conservative 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)... 

Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields

From "Nineteenth-century Regional Writing in the United States" is the work of Dottie Webb.

Excerpt:

When Jewett and Fields both lost the most important men in their lives--Sarah's father Theodore in 1878 and Annie's husband "Jamie" in 1880--the two women found their friendship deepened by their mutual losses. Their relationship rapidly evolved into a long-term union in which they devoted their primary bonds of loyalty, love, and emotional intensity to one another. The exact nature of their involvement has been the subject of continued controversy. Scholars interested in constructing histories of lesbianism have tended to focus more on passionate emotional bonds than on genital sexuality...

Online Texts by Sarah Orne Jewett

Names Index:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
| Authors Index | Scholars Index |