ASSIGNMENT 8:
Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron"
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, "The Revolt of 'Mother' "

The decades following the Civil War marked times of enormous growth and change in the U.S. As the industrial revolution swept the country near the end of the century, people began leaving their rural homes for industrial jobs in America's burgeoning cities, while at the same time immigrants from all over the world crowded into tenements to take advantage of new urban opportunities. In the years between the Civil War and the turn of the century the population of New York City grew from around 500,000 to nearly 3.5 million, and Chicago grew from a small, Midwestern town of 20,000 into a major metropolitan center of over 2 million inhabitants. By the end of the First World War in 1918, nearly one-half of the U.S. population lived in about a dozen urban centers.

While America was leaping into a new industrial age, people feared that local folkways and traditions would be soon forgotten. Responding to these sentiments, realistic writers such as Twain, Harte, and Chestnutt, among others, answered Hamlin Garland's call to "deal with conditions peculiar to our own land and climate" and set their stories in specific American regions. In fact, their regional settings were so integral to their stories they often became characters in themselves. They built their plots and characters around people's ordinary, everyday lives, and explored themes that expressed an antipathy to change and a certain degree of nostalgia for an always-past golden age. Their characters, which were sometimes quaint or stereotypical, were marked by their adherence to the old ways, by regional dialect, and by particular personality traits central to the region.

Among the most memorable of these "local color" writers were several women remembered for their fine depictions of New England: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Sarah Orne Jewett. Because Jewett is probably among the best-known of the 19th-century regionalists, her work has often been used to represent the genre as a whole. In contrast to Twain, Jewett emerges as refined and restrained. Like Twain, Jewett gives us "local color," but hers is rooted in the Maine coast among a people more sober and private than Twain's boisterous Westerners. If we see in Jewett a less exuberant kind of realism than we saw in Twain, it is also less sentimental, though no less vivid.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman has also often been categorized as a local colorist; however, this view has tended to minimize her work. Her use of dialect may be compared with Twain's as she manages to bring us the voices she knew with fine precision, and like Jewett she offers a vivid sense of life in New England. Most significant, however, is the way in which she moves beyond region to offer a focus on the psychology of women's conflicts at the turn of the century. From the opening lines of "The Revolt of 'Mother'," for example, what Sarah Penn seems to want most of all is to engage her husband as her audience and to find acceptance for her own voice. However, "revolt" may be too strong a word to describe Sarah Penn's attempt to make herself heard; she remains within the family structure, even if she has managed to redefine its terms. Moreover, it is Nanny's impending marriage, not Sarah's own frustration, that moves her to act.

Reading Assignment

1. Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron" (pp. 431-438).
2. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, "The Revolt of 'Mother' " (pp. 568-579).

Writing Assignment

1. Write an essay of about 500 words in response to one of the following two topics:
1. Realist writing typically controls and limits the use of symbolism; the realists depend more on the use of concrete images than on abstract symbols. However, in "A White Heron" the tree, the hunter, the cow, and the heron all seem to possess a symbolic or even mythical importance. Choose one to discuss in relationship to Sylvie and explore the way Jewett combines elements of folk or fairy tale and literary realism.
2. Sylvia is interested in the "young sportsman": he appeals to "the woman's heart, asleep in the child." How does this attraction complicate and enrich the story? Does it make sense to read this story as "about" innocence, awakening sexuality, or the joys and sacrifices that come with interacting with the human world?
2. "The Revolt of 'Mother' " portrays a woman who triumphs over the material conditions of her existence. In one or two paragraphs, describe the nature of that triumph and the process by which she achieves it.
3. In several well-written paragraphs, contrast the poverty of the homeless characters in Garland's "Under the Lion's Paw" with the inadequately housed Sarah and Nanny Penn in "The Revolt of 'Mother'." How does each author present their characters' ability to confront poverty?

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