Journal 16: Sarah Orne Jewett

Michelle Romero
Eng 48b
Dr. Scott Lankford

A White Heron

"Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm. She thought often with wistful compassion of a wretched geranium that belonged to a town neighbor."

This passage describes Sylvia's growth after moving out to the farm, away from the busy manufacturing city full of inhabitants. It is as though Sylvia really blossoms when she is given the freedom to roam about and explore nature and her self without limitations. Her neighbor on the other hand, is left with a wretched geranium.

The flower is symbolic of life, beauty, and woman sexuality. While Sylvia has been able to grow and be fulfilled in the quiet peace of the farm, the loud, crowed city seems to wither away the flower of a neighbor she knew.

This symbolism may be left in shallow waters where Jewett suggests that cities are oppressing and do not allow for personal growth, so it is better to live in the quiet of a farm, OR.....

It may really be what the cities represent as an industry which is so oppressing. In the city, there is a society. There is infrastructure, not just physical, but also societal. There are rules and norms which women especially are expected to follow. In this case, Jewett may be revealing a deeper oppression of the free and independent child within each woman and the need for that to be preserved for true personal fulfillment. She suggests, in other passages as well, that this sort of fulfillment is not possible in the crowed, industrial cities; there is no place for women to be their own person.

A later passage supports this deeper symbolic meaning when Sylvia moves on to another tree where she will discover the white heron and have to make a decision: "There, when she made the dangerous pass from one tree to the other, the great enterprise would really begin."

Again, she tells the reader that the decision or possibly, the passing from a child in to a woman, is dangerous. Dangerous because it is a mystery? Dangerous because she will not have her own voice anymore? We do not know. What we do know is that in that decision or that crossing over, the "enterprise" begins. The "enterprise" of course is another reference to industry, structure, rules, and "progress."

There are different depths of meanings in these passages, but Jewett is insightfully recognizing the changes occurring around her AND their consequences in different arenas. This is what makes her a great local color writer, but also on a deeper level, and insightful literary figure of her time.