Who Is Sarah Orne Jewett Changing Society

Sarah Orne Jewett: Changing Society Through Writing
Sarah Orne Jewett had a challenging life, struggling with rheumatoid arthritis and the death of her father in the late 1800’s. Amidst these challenges, she continued to write excellent novels that challenged the customs of the time (GVRL 2009). A famous saying of hers states, “How seldom a book comes that stirs the minds and hearts of the good men and women of such a village as this” (GVRL 1997). This saying connects to how her novels would make readers think differently. In Sarah Orne Jewett’s novel, The Country of the Pointed Firs, many of the characters are women and play a massive role in the plot, in the course challenging cultural and sexual norms. The novel is centered around a
female narrator who unifies the town by making friends as well as developing these groups of friends to create lifelong relationships for many residents of their town. In her novel, Sarah Orne Jewett challenges cultural and sexual norms through the narrator’s experiences in the town of Dunnet Landing. By unifying the town through her friendships becoming a writer in a time when many women did not have careers, and raising the social status of the town’s women, the narrator makes the case that women are perfectly capable of the same things that men are. Despite the novel’s plot not having many significant developments, the many conversations and meetings that the narrator encounters are significant. Although the novel lacks changes in setting as well as a significant climax, the novel’s message through the narrator’s eyes are extremely meaningful. The novel starts when the narrator moves from a big city up north to a small, spread out community, named Dunnet Landing. Shortly after moving to the small town, the narrator quickly finds that the town she now resides in is much more enjoyable compared to her former home. Towards the beginning of the novel, the narrator meets Mrs. Todd, a gardener who later becomes one of her best friends. Although she is a widow, Mrs. Todd keeps busy with gardening as well as spending time with the narrator. Later on, the she purchases a schoolhouse, a major landmark in the town, as a place for her to write. As a result of the purchase, the she congregates a great deal of visitors, many of whom are widows. With a strong trait of making friends and accordingly creates multiple friendships with many different town residents, unifying the town in the process. Before the narrator moves to the town in Maine, Dunnet Landing was an extremely quiet and almost abandoned town.
The town of Dunnet Landing was known to be a quiet place, with a large number of widows who lacked the effort to socialize. This aspect about the town can be witnessed when the narrator says, “It was a long time after this; an hour was very long in that coast town where nothing stole away the shortest minute” (Jewett 9). When the author states, “nothing stole away from the shortest minute,” she is explaining how quiet and deserted the town can be at times, not to mention how boring it may be for her at times. On the other hand, the narrator does not always mind some silence, but there is a big contrast to her life in the bustling city compared to her current town where nothing happens. Later in the novel, the author continues to claim how quiet the town of Dunnet Landing as well as Green Island, an isolated island off the coast of Dunnet Landing. An example of the noiseless town appears when the narrator says, “For the village was so still that I could hear the shy whippoorwills singing that night as I lay awake in my downstairs bedroom, and the scent of Mrs. Todd’s herb garden under the window blew in again with every gentle rising of the seabreeze” (36). Although the calmness of the town is soothing to the narrator at night, she ends up believing that the town is too quiet and that there needs to be a change to save the town. After many days of making friends and traveling around the area, the narrator realizes that she is helping the people of the town and unifying them. Throughout the novel, the narrator attempts to make a wealth of different friends in the town through her writing and meeting residents as she explores the area, therefore changing the essence of Dunnet Landing and making the town more tight-knit. The narrator has a flashback to a lonely woman, living by herself on an island close by to Dunnet Landing after hearing a loud
knock when the author writes:
My companions and I had been so intent upon the subject of conversation that we had not heard any one open the gate, but at this moment, above the noise of the rain, we heard a loud knocking. We were all startled as we sat by the fire, and Mrs. Todd rose hastily and went to answer the call, leaving her rocking chair in violent motion… there was a sound of heavy dropping of the rain from the eaves, and the distant roar and undertone of the sea. My thoughts flew back to the lonely woman on her outer island; what separation from humankind she must have felt, what terror and sadness, even in a summer storm like this! (48).
When the narrator hears the knocking, she immediately starts thinking about the woman on the island in a sympathetic way. Whether she realizes it or not, the narrator is slowly enriching the lives of the people in town through bringing to them both companionship and camaraderie. Likewise, the narrator realizes that making friends is a great way for her to unify the town through herself and her writing. When the narrator is writing in the schoolhouse and talking with William, a fellow town resident, she says: “I became possessed of a sudden unwonted curiosity in regard to William, and felt that half the pleasure of my visit would be lost if I could not make his interesting acquaintance” (28). The quotation illustrates the fact that the narrator is trying to make friends with William, and that the time would be useless if the two did not become friends. While it may seem slightly excessive that the narrator must be friends with William, she knows that in order to bring the citizens together, friendships must be created.
Though the narrator and many of her friends are women in the novel, the author creates a setting where women are the leaders, thereby breaking through sexual norms. Shortly after the narrator makes her bold purchase of the schoolhouse, a central landmark to the town, she describes its significance and says, “I spent many days there quite undisturbed, with the sea-breeze blowing through the small, high windows and swaying the heavy outside shutters to and fro. I hung my hat and luncheon-basket on an entry nail as if I were a small scholar, but I sat at the teacher’s desk as if I were that great authority” (6). Likewise, the narrator is expanding on how she is aspiring to become a successful writer. Unlike many novels at the time, this novel writes about a woman, not a man, being the leader in the community by purchasing and owning the main landmark of Dunnet Landing. The author herself also attended college despite the norm that many women did not at the time. “Although she (the author) also attended the Berwick Academy, graduating in 1865, she considered her schooling insignificant compared with the learning she gained on her own” (Britannica). The fact that Jewett went to college and was educated parallels the storyline of the novel and how the narrator became a writer at a time when this was unusual for a woman.. Jewett’s novel has been characterized as a novel that brought together women, also distributing power to women despite the time being mostly dominated by men across the country. The secondary source: The Fictive Fence, gives a great amount of analysis on The Country of the Pointed Firs, and connects the novel’s plot of a woman leading and unifying the community, breaking through sexual norms and gender roles. ¨Her novel thus raises the question whether it is possible for a woman writer to affirm hidden values, to make them more visible and accessible, without reifying the forces of cultural domination that threaten her feminist vision¨ (The Fictive Fence). Furthermore, the writer of the source corroborates with the novel in the sense that the narrator “makes them (her values) more visible and accessible” in a time when feminism and the fight for equality was largely disapproved of. Building on top of the novel, the author of the source writes about h