Sarah Orne Jewett

This week's readings on regionalism, realism, and naturalism featured Sarah Orne Jewett as one of the writers. I really liked her story, A White Heron. In this story, Jewett's writing is considered a "hallmark of New England regionalism" ( Norton Anthology, Sarah Orne Jewett biography, pg. 415). In this story, a young girl meets a strange man on her walk back home. The man is a ornithologist who is looking for a specific white heron. The man stays with her and her grandmother for a couple of days while he hunts the surrounding area for the bird. Sylvia, the young girl, becomes mesmorized by the young man and follows him around. "Sylvia still watched the young man with loving admiration. She had never seen anybody so charming and delightful; the woman's heart, asleep in the child, was vaugely thrilled by a dream of love" (pg. 419, Sarah Orne Jewett, The White Heron, Norton Anthology). The young man asks Sylvia to tell him where the white heron's hiding place is and in exchange for the knowledge he will give her and her grandmother money. Sylvia and her grandmother are very poor but Sylvia still can't bring herself to indulge the young sportsman with the information he is looking for because she cares to much for the birds and the nature which she calls home.