‘’A White Heron’’ by Sarah Orne Jewett

• Born in South Berwick, Maine, daughter of obstetrician

• Inspired by Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s Main novel The Pearl of Orr’s
Island (1862), she began to write regionalist fiction about coastal
Maine
• Regionalism: branch of American realism representing distinctive
characters, dialects, lifestyles and landscapes of various non-urban
sections of U.S.
• Her work was published and encouraged by William Dean Howells,
editor of Atlantic Monthly
‘’A White Heron’’ by Sarah Orne Jewett
• Her most famous work: The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), a
collected of interconnected sketches about coastal Maine
• From 1881 to her death in 1909, Jewett had close domestic
relationship with Annie Adams Fields, widow of editor James T. Fields:
they had a “Boston marriage”
• Relationships between mothers/daughters and among women figure
prominently in her fiction. After the Civil War, which killed many men,
American women faced new demands and opportunities to form
relationships and communities
Plot summary
• Sylvia has come from the city to live in the Maine woods with her
grandmother, Mrs. Tilley. As the story begins, Sylvia has been living with
her grandmother for nearly a year, learning to adapt to country ways. She
helps the old woman by taking over some of the more manual jobs, such
as finding Mistress Moolly, the cow, each evening in the fields where she
grazes and brings her home. By means of this and other tasks, along with
her explorations in the forest, Sylvia has become a country girl who
dearly loves her new home. She has taken to it easily and immerses
herself in her new life completely, as evidenced by the description of her
journey home each evening with the cow: “Their feet were familiar with
the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not.”
Plot summary
• One evening she is approached by a hunter, who is in the area looking
for birds to shoot and preserve for his collection. This young man is
searching in particular for the rare white heron, and he is sure that it
makes its nest in the vicinity. He accompanies Sylvia on her way with
hopes of spending the night at her grandmother’s house. Once he has
received this invitation, he makes himself at home. After they eat, he
says that he will give a sum of money to anyone who can lead him to
the white heron. The next day Sylvia accompanies the hunter into the
forest as he searches for the bird’s nest, but he does not find it.
Plot summary
• Early the following morning, the girl decides to go out and look for the bird
by herself so that she can be sure of showing the hunter its exact location
when he awakes. She decides to climb the tallest tree in the forest so that
she can see the entire countryside, and she finds the heron, just as she had
thought she would. When Sylvia climbs the tree as a bird might, she arrives
at an epiphany at the tree's top. High as a bird, she has broken free of the
world beneath and "becomes" the heron. But Sylvia is so affected by her
leaf-top observation of the heron and other wildlife that she cannot bring
herself to disclose the heron's location to the hunter after all, despite his
entreaties. Sylvia knows that she would be awarded much-needed money
for directing him to the heron, but she decides that she can play no part in
bringing about the bird's death.
Plot summary
• The hunter eventually departs without his prize. Sylvia grows up to
ponder if her choice to conceal the heron's secret was a better choice
than to receive the young man's money and friendship. The author
states that the treasures Sylvia might have lost are easily forgotten
among the splendors of the woodland.
Literary Elements in "A White Heron"
• Setting: "New England wilderness"
• Imagery: Jewett uses a great deal of imagery in describing the
• sights and sounds Sylvia is experiencing, especially that of the forest
and its inhabitants. “There was an open place where the sunshine
always seemed strangely yellow and hot, where tall, nodding rushes
grew”
• Point of View: This short story is written from a third person
• omniscient POV.
Literary Elements in "A White Heron"
• Symbols: The White Heron- freedom, the heron could fly, soaring
high above any woes or worries, which Sylvia longed to do
• "Sylvia felt as if she too could go flying away among the clouds," the
tall pine tree also represents the purity of nature itself.
• The tall pine tree- represents clarity of thought, for Sylvia
can view everything from the top of it and it splits in two showing the
two paths Sylvia could go down in her life.
• The hunter- represents intrusion of civilization into nature
as well as introducing the themes of man vs. nature and man vs. man.
Literary Elements in "A White Heron"
• Conflict: There are two main conflicts in this short story, one being
internal and one being external. The main internal conflict is the
conflict Sylvia feels about telling the whereabouts of the white heron.
Sylvia's head tells her to give up the birds location and earn both
money and attention from the hunter, yet her heart is telling her to
protect the bird. While the external conflict is that of civilization (the
hunter) versus the rural nature.
Literary Elements in "A White Heron"
• Flashback: "She thought often with wistful compassion of a wretched
geranium that belonged to a town neighbor." (1592) Sylvia thinks
back to when she lived in the city, before she lived on the farm.
• Foreshadowing: "Whatever treasures were lost to her, woodlands and
summer-time, remember! Bring your gifts and graces and tell your
secrets to this lonely country child!" (1598) These lines foreshadow
the promises of what nature will reward Sylvia with for saving the
heron.
Literary Elements in "A White Heron"
• Protagonist: Sylvia is clearly the protagonist, because she is protecting
the forest and what she loves, standing up to the hunter and his bribes.
• Antagonist: The hunter "he killed the birds"
• Theme: There are many themes in this short story, there is that of self-
discovery, man vs, man, man vs. nature, and through symbolism even
man vs. himself.
• Methods of Characterization: From what others said Sylvia was "afraid
of folks“ and "Sylvia's pale face and shining gray eyes with ever growing
enthusiasm" and the hunter was "tall young man, who carried a gun
over his shoulder"
 Nature vs. Civilization
• “A White Heron” sets up a conflict between nature and civilization
through the relationship between Sylvia and the young man.

• In this story, nature and civilization are ambiguous categories,

mutually interdependent.
 Sylvia Latin sylva=forest
• “A White Heron” sets up a conflict between nature and civilization
through the relationship between Sylvia and the young man.

• In this story, nature and civilization are ambiguous categories,

mutually interdependent.
 Sylvia Latin sylva=forest
• Raised 8 years in “crowded manufacturing town”: “it seemed as if she
never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm” with
her grandmother (¶2)
• Quiet, “Afraid of folks” (¶3)
• She knows the land, the birds, the squirrels, etc.; she tames and feeds
them (¶16)
 Young Man A “sportsman”
• Young Man A “sportsman”: nature as sport (¶26)
• An “ornithologist”: kills, stuffs, and preserves birds (¶20): collection &
classification
• Hunting some rare birds for 5 yrs—including white heron, “queer tall
white bird with soft feathers and long thin legs” (¶22)
• Loud: “a boy’s whistle, determined, and somewhat aggressive” (¶5)
• Gallant, well-mannered (like a knight)
 Young Man vs. Sylvia: Issues

• Young Man vs. Sylvia: Issues

• Speaking: “Speak up and tell me what your name is” (¶7);
• “The sound of her own unquestioned voice would have terrified her”
(¶27)
• Money: Young man offers $10 for showing him white heron (big
money for poor rural folks)
 Young Man vs. Sylvia: Issues

• Violence: “Sylvia would have liked him vastly better without his gun;
she could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to
like so much.” (¶26)
• Love: “Some premonition of that great power stirred and swayed
these young creatures.” (¶26)
• Sylvia thinks him “charming and delightful.”
• Young man could take home not only the birds but Sylvia, too.
The Pine Tree: Central Symbol

• The Pine Tree: Central Symbol

• Survivor: “the last of its generation the woodchoppers who had felled
its mates were dead and gone long ago ” (¶28).
• Beacon: “landmark for sea and shore miles and miles away”
• Prospect: “see the ocean”
• Mystery: “dark boughs that the wind always stirred”
• Practical Tool: Locate the white heron
The Pine Tree: Central Symbol

• Climbing the Tree: Symbolic Journey

• Struggle associated with birds: “her bare feet and fingers, that
pinched and held like bird's claws to the monstrous ladder reaching
up” (¶31); “the sharp dry twigs caught and held her and scratched her
like angry talons” (¶32)
• Transition: 1) white oak; 2) pine tree: “dangerous pass from one tree
to the other” (¶31): Symbolism?
• Sylvia has already taken the daring step from town to farm
The Pine Tree: Central Symbol

• Climbing the Tree: Symbolic Journey

• World vision: “like the great main-mast of the voyaging earth” (¶33);
“truly it was a vast and awesome world” (¶34)
• Identification: “This determined spark of human spirit The old pine
must have loved his new dependent the brave, beating heart of the
solitary gray-eyed child” (¶33)
Discovery of Heron

• Male heron rises from marsh, perches on pine tree, calls back to mate
in nest, in dead hemlock tree
• Disturbed by cat-birds, the heron returns to his nest
• “She knows his secret now” (¶36)
• Sylvia descends
Climax: To speak or not to speak?

• the splendid moment has come to speak of the dead hemlock-tree by

the green marsh” (¶38)
• “No, she must keep silence! Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the
heron’s secret and give its life away” (¶40)
Climax: To speak or not to speak?

• Sylvia’s Choice (¶40-41) Silence, rather than speaking

• Poverty, rather than money
• Loneliness, rather than love
• Loyalty to nature rather than to a man
• Peace, rather than violence
• Nature, rather than the “great world” (¶40)
Conclusion

• Sylvia is not really a child of nature, but cosmopolitan—a child of the

town
• Her loyalty to nature is a sophisticated choice, not an innocent one—
comes through experience and suffering
• Paradoxically, her loyalty and devotion to nature are cultural rather
than natural
Conclusion

• Sylvia’s devotion to nature parallels, on a different level, the young

man’s devotion to nature.
• “A White Heron” illustrates the idea of 19th- century American
essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson that nature and humanity
complement or complete one another.