A WHITE HERON

SARAH ORNE JEWETT

She is contemporary to Mark Twain. And she is from Maine (South Berwick). She established
herself as a short story writer for adults and young people.

This story is one of the best well-known and often anthologized short story. Many of her short
stories are published in one magazine, but this one not because it is “too romantic”.

There is a lot of collection in which this story have been published.

REALISM

It is different in Europe than in America. Begins in France, literary movement calling for “reality
and truth in the depiction of ordinary life.”

Portrayed with truth and accuracy as the goal, the writer does not select facts according to
preconceived ideals.

Realism is also a technique: the representation of middle-class life: the faithful representation
of reality, or verisimilitude.

AMERICAN REALISM:

REGIALISM OR LOCAL COLOR FICTION (fiction that focuses on characters, dialect, customs,
topography and other specific features to a specific region: the importance resides in the
SETTING)

Encompasses the period of time from the civil war to the turn of the century.

Because it was a reaction of romanticism: dual influence of romanticism and realism.

An outgrowth of realism with more focus on a particular setting and its influence over
characters.

Most local color fiction: a sketch or short story collection.

CHARACTERISTICS OF REALISM:

Subject matter: ordinary people and events.

Purpose: verisimilitude, the truthful representation of life.

Point of view: omniscient and objective (limited)

Characters: middle class, ordinary people.

Plot de-emphasized: focus on everyday life, complex ethical choices often the subject, events
are made to seem the inevitable result of characters’ choices.

(here the setting is more important than the plot, as important as the characters)

Humans control their destinies: characters act on their environment rather than simply
reacting of it.
SETTING: the emphasis is frequently on nature and the limitations it imposes; settings are
frequently remote and inaccessible. The setting is integral to the story and may sometimes
become a character itself.

Characters: local color stories tend to be concerned with the character of the distinct or
region. In women’s local color fiction, the heroines are often unmarried women or young girls.

Narrator: typically an educated observer from the world beyond who learns something from
the characters while preserving a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes ironic distance from
them, the narrator serves as mediator between the rural folk of the tale and the urban
audience to whom the tale is directed: the characters tried to use their vernacular, so the
narrator uses a more sophisticated language, because of the audience.

Plots: nothing happens, it is the emphasize.

Themes: many local color fiction share an antipathy to change and a certain degree of
nostalgia for an always-past golden age.

Thematic tension or conflict between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values is often
symbolized by the intrusion of an outsider.

Use of dialect (for the credibility) and detailed description.