Written by Geneviève Beaudoin
Biography
of Sarah Orne Jewett
Constantly ill when she
was young, Sarah Orne Jewett did not go to school very often. However, she
spent a lot of her time accompanying her doctor father, and she started to
observe the customs of the inhabitants of her region. During her free time,
she discovered early the world of books, and her favourite
writers were Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola, Leo Tolstoy, and Henry James. She
even took her favourite slogan from Flaubert: "One should write of
ordinary life as if one were writing history." It can probably explain why most of her works are about the people she
was most familiar with, the inhabitants of Maine, and the everyday world of
villages and ordinary people as well.
"A White Heron" is one of her most famous works. In this
story, we discover a young
girl who lives deep in the forest
with her grandmother. Sylvia, the
young girl, faces a dilemma when she must choose
to tell the truth or not to a handsome young hunter about where a rare
white heron has its nest. Women writers tend to see a relation between their
lives and nature, and this is exactly what Jewett pictured in this story. For
the little Sylvia, the relationship with the bird is more important than the
one she has with the man. The critics recognized this short story as a “treasure”.
Since that time, themes such as good versus evil, nature versus civilization,
feminine versus masculine world view, and innocence versus experience have
been used to analyse this particular short story. Consequently, it has become
the most admired of Jewett’s nearly 150 short stories. However, she did not
just write short stories; she also wrote many poems, essays, portraits,
letters and novels.
She had also been inspired by the life of her father, and wrote her
first novel about him, A Country Doctor (1884). She said that “her father was the greatest influence of
her life. From watching him at work, studying his medical books, and reading
the literature he urged upon her, she early decided that only a professional
life of some kind would satisfy her emotional and intellectual needs.” Jewett grew up with her own ideals and she came to love the New England
world of nature. She saw a perfect mixture of strength, love, knowledge, and
wisdom in both her father and nature.
Jewett had never been married, and one critic had already said that
perhaps there was a link between Sylvia's rejection of the hunter in
her story "A
White Heron", and her own decision not to get married. Sylvia and her
both rejected love of men. After
she established herself as a short story writer for adults and young people,
Jewett had a relationship with another woman named Annie Fields, the widow of
the famous publisher James T. Fields. After Mr. Fields died in 1881, Jewett
and Annie Fields traveled in Europe and America, and lived together for the
rest of Jewett's life.
In 1901, Jewett was the first woman to receive an honorary Doctor of
Letters degree from Bowdoin College. A year after she got her degree, she was
injured in a carriage accident. Jewett suffered a concussion and may have
cracked a vertebrae, which left her immobile. Although she
was paralyzed, she continued to write some letters and in 1904, she published
her last story "A Spring Sunday". She died at her home in South
Berwick in 1909. Sarah Orne Jewett left behind her many stories collected in volumes
such as Deephaven (1877), A White Heron and Other Stories
(1886), Tales of New England (1890), Strangers and Wayfarers
(1890), and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896).