Sarah Orne Jewett Analysis

Tensions that are internally maintained by the main characters are perhaps some of the most effective in story-telling. Subtle authorial gestures towards the concerns of independent individuals not only deliver a sense of autonomy; the ways in which traits are revealed can themselves prove to be sustenance enough for some works. For Sylvia, the main character in Sarah Orne Jewett's 1886 short story A white heron, these internal tensions become palpated through the unexpected encounter with an unnamed stranger. This moment and the action within the story, however, prompt characteristics of Sylvia's to be displayed, perhaps for the first time even to the story's young girl. Jewett's story radiates with coming of age tensions, burgeoning sexuality, and identity concerns. 

The titular object of Jewett's story is perhaps the biggest clue to the work's internal tensions. The purity associated in Western traditions with the color white for wedding dresses is likely, in 1886, a quality of which Sylvia herself was aware. The bird in the work that is referenced is rare and elusive, and for that reason, it is the object of the ne'er-do-well hunter's eye. In the perspective of the story, after all, the hunter emerges similarly evasively from the darkness of the woods. When Sylvia first sees him, she is concerned and worries to herself in a curious way. On the way back to her grandmother's house, reluctantly accompanied by the hunter, the narrator asks “But who could have foreseen such an accident as this?” (Jewett, 1886) This question forces the audience to consider more seriously the impact of arriving at the house with the hunter. Sylvia, importantly, lives with her grandmother. Accordingly, the parental authority often protective against the opposite sex is, in Jewett's story, somewhat removed. In search of the figure of purity, the hunter forces his presence upon the household in order to sleep there. This much perceptibly arrives, as the aforementioned quote indicates, as something of an unwanted event. 

Thus, when Sylvia seeks to appease him by finding the bird's nesting locating before he awakes, this similarly reflects the character's interest in her own sexuality. Having her protagonist climb the highest tree in the area cues a deliberately phallic image. Only upon finding the location does Sylvia realize the preciousness of the bird. In this revelation, Jewett makes a deliberate parallel between the self-recognition of Sylvia's own finitude and sexuality. This much arrives in stark contrast, for example, to the line from the beginning of the work, “Sylvia had all the time there was, and very little use to make of it.” (Jewett, 1886) Here, on the other hand, Sylvia has little time before the hunter — as the work's antagonist and a potential harbinger of the young girl's sexuality — awakes. Even less so when she decides that she does not wish to help him hunt it despite his offered reward. At this moment, the audience's perception of the character of the hunter is definitely affirmed as antagonistic. Sylvia's identity, meanwhile, is likewise affirmed here as childlike. Unwilling to commit to aiding in the destruction of the thematically virginal bird, Sylvia recognizes the limit on her own time and, perhaps like never before, cherishes its fleetingness. 

The internal conflicts in A white heron sustain the narrative through somewhat clear symbolism. By equating Sylvia's sexuality with the elusive eponymous bird, Sarah Jewett effectively makes a tense, sparse, and almost wholesome world from the confines of knowability. What the narrator details elucidates Sylvia's concerns; and, even more importantly, the way in which these concerns are communicated reveals the change in the attitude by the character. Thus the moralistic bend toward the end of the work arrives appropriately: Sylvia has effectively denied the advances of the anonymous hunter. Jewett's work effectively tells a coming-of-age tale through subversive imagery.

Reference

Jewett, S. (1886). A White Heron. Retrieved January 22, 2017, from Jewett Texts, http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/awh/heron.htm