I had never heard of Sarah Orne Jewett until my friend Brian included her novella The Country of the Pointed Firs on his impromptu list of recommended American works. I don’t think that this work has attained anything close to canonical status, but nevertheless I found it the most enjoyable of my recent American readings.
Miss Jewett was a 19th century Mainer who wrote “local color” pieces about coastal Maine. As a Southerner, I found the book interesting simply because I know so little about New England. The setting is vital to the work, and Miss Jewett’s descriptions are detailed and evocative. She often emphasizes the differences between coastal Maine and areas further inland, which she clearly views as less interesting.
The current work is not so much a novel as a series of sketches. This confused me at first. “Where is this going?” I kept asking myself. Something noteworthy would happen and I would think “Aha! This is what the book is about!” but before long Miss Jewett would be off on another track entirely. But the conventional unifying role of plot is here supplanted by theme and character.
Mrs. Almira Todd, the narrator’s landlady and local herbalist, is the most memorable character, and probably the one who gets the most “stage time.” Alternately loquacious and secretive (especially about the properties of certain plants), Mrs. Todd is the narrator’s primary friend and confidant in the town of Dunnet, and often her tour guide and mode of introduction to the other characters. She seems somehow connected to everything and everyone in Dunnet, plant life included.
Miss Joanna Todd (Almira’s cousin by marriage) lives alone on Shell-heap Island. Disappointed in love, “poor Joanna” exiles herself for life. She personifies the theme of isolation vs. connection that runs throughout the book. Despite her isolation, she is unforgotten and subtly cared for by her neighbors, who sometimes “put somethin’ ashore” for her on the island.
Captain Littlepage is a retired seaman who seems to always be looking for a receptive ear for his stories and who finds one in the narrator. He provides a Lovecraftian interlude early in the work with his tale of a place to the north where souls wait to go to their final destination.
As I read this book, I couldn’t help but think of the oft-repeated criticism of Jane Austen that nothing happens in her novels. Frankly, this collection of “local color” sketches makes Emma seem like Raiders of the Lost Ark by comparison. I would have thought that this would bother me, but it didn’t. Miss Jewett’s characters are too memorable, her writing too good, and her sense of place too strong for the lack of a coherent plot to be seen as a significant weakness.