A white heron

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The short story A White Heron (dt .: The White Heron) was published in 1886 by Sarah Orne Jewett and is considered together with the work "The Country of the Pointed Firs" (1896) as their main work. The story is part of a collection of short stories (A White Heron, The Gray Man, Farmer Finch, Marsh Rosemary, The Dulham Ladies, A Business Man, Mary and Martha, The News from Petersham, The Two Browns), which goes under the name “A White Heron and other Stories ”. The short story is about experiences of nature and the adolescence of the main character Sylvia. The metaphorical journey of the main character and his development of consciousness on the way to adulthood and to the decision for a nature-loving life is shown. This decision implicitly contains the rejection of advancing industrialization . It is therefore a concise example of an initiation story. Like few other stories by Sarah Orne Jewett, “A White Heron” shines with detailed and vivid descriptions of the nature of New England and its inhabitants and, not least because of this, is considered an important example of the emancipatory literature of New England together with Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown (see web links on this Page).

Literary significance and reception history

Critics, including the well-known American author and critic William Dean Howells, see the short story "A White Heron" as particularly valuable from the following points of view:

  • "Creation" of a counter-draft to advancing industrialization (utopia)
  • Outstanding example of "New England Realism" (see: William Dean Howells )
  • Emancipation from materialism and industrialism
  • Recalling the individual as a socially significant actor
  • Return to nature (beginning of natural ethical literature in North America)
  • Beginning of doubts about the unreservedly positive development of the USA (lost paradises)
  • A major example of New England feminist literature.

Abstract

Sylvia, who has lived in the big city for the past eight years, now lives with her grandmother in rural New England. She plays with the cows, enjoys wildlife and roams the surrounding woods. It is completely absorbed in nature (cf. transcendentalism ). One day she meets a hunter from the modern city who is looking for the rare white heron. Sylvia, who thinks she has seen this bird before, after a short hesitation goes on a search, on the one hand to please the young hunter and on the other hand to win a prize money ($ 10) that the hunter has offered for herself. When Sylvia finally discovers the heron after a long search and an experienced path through the forests of New England, she tries to get to the nest of the animal, which is on a tall pine tree. On the way to the top, she thinks the tree is talking to her and denies her the ascent. In the end, when she thinks back to the beauty and idyll of her surroundings, her ascent is much easier. Arrived at the tip of the pine, she discovers the nest on the one hand, but also the distant Atlantic Ocean with numerous arriving ships on the other. Fascinated by the beauty of nature, the rare animal in its direct vicinity and the contrast to the "heavily populated" ocean, Sylvia decides to keep her discovery to herself and protect the white herons (and thus nature as a whole) from danger and change protect. In doing so, she consciously decides against modernization and materialism ($ 10) and in favor of a nature-loving, idyllic life.

literature

  • Sarah Orne Jewett: A White Heron And Other Stories - ISBN 978-1-4250-3436-8
  • Mayer, Sylvia: Natural ethics and New England regional literature: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rose Terry Cooke, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman / Sylvia Mayer. - Heidelberg: Winter, 2004. -275 pp.
  • Louis A. Renza (1984): A White Heron and the Question of Minor Literature, Revue Francaise d'Etudes Americaines
  • Jay Martin: Harvests of Change - American Literature, 1865-1914, Englewood-Cliffs 1969
  • A White Heron Study Guide by Book Rags

Web links