The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories
by Sarah Orne Jewett
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Description
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is Sarah Orne Jewett's most popular book. In its elegantly constructed sketches, a worldly, anonymous writer spends the summer in a tiny Maine fishing village where she hopes to find peace and solitude. As she gains the acceptance and trust of her hosts, the community's power and complexity are slowly revealed. While its episodes portray the difficulty and loneliness of rural life, they also display its dignity and strength, particularly as expressed in show more the bonds between women: mothers, daughters, and friends. Written during a time of rapid change and national conflict, surprisingly modern in its treatment of character and its literary techniques, The Country of the Pointed Firs addresses the delicate and uncertain art of understanding others. This centennial edition contains a facsimile of the original text, thereby restoring the novel to Jewett's own version, which had been considerably altered in other published versions, plus four related stories. Further enhancing the importance of this volume is editor Sarah Way Sherman's introduction, which includes a sketch of Jewett's life and professional development, a commentary on textual accuracy, and a discussion of the book's themes and techniques as well as its historical context. show lessTags
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Member Recommendations
InfoQuest In both Gaskell and Jewett's novels, a young woman (the first-person narrator) comes to visit a rural community in a series of related vignettes. Jewett's is the more poetic, and Gaskell's is the more humorous, but both are lovely little books which center on the experiences and relationships of women in the 19th century.
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cransell The Country of Pointed Firs really reminded me of Anne of Green Gables - although not at all focused of a child or growing up. But if you enjoy one, you'll likely enjoy the other.
CurrerBell Lovers of Jewett might also want to investigate the less well known Constance Fenimore Woolson (a contemporary and friend of Henry James), some of whose earlier writings include regionalism similar to Jewett's. In particular, Woolson's Castle Nowhere stories are of Michigan's Mackinac Island and partly united by a common narrator, much as in Pointed Firs
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CurrerBell Mary Ellen Chase was the "successor" to Sarah Orne Jewett among Maine regionalists. The Edge of Darkness, which apparently was Chase's own favorite among her works, has a definite resemblance to The Country of the Pointed Firs as a collection of vignettes that are united around a central character.
Member Reviews
I'm not sure how to categorize this -- it's literary fiction, and quite beautiful literary fiction at that, but it reads like a quiet and cadenced memoir and it's a novel made up of short stories. Sarah Orne Jewett's language is a delight, and something about the structure and the telling makes the reader feel as though they are the mysterious visitor, writing, observing, and ever enjoying Mrs. Todd and her circle of community. It's a beautiful respite to visit Dunnett's Landing -- a story from a different space and time, one, I think, that was fading even as the book was written. Lovely, and like stepping through a window into historical Maine, or any secluded seaside town.
I found this book (one novella and several short stories) to be utterly delightful. The descriptions of the natural world allow you to picture these places in perfect detail and the pictures evoke a strong longing for this long-ago landscape. My favorites were the title piece, The White Heron, and Martha's Lady. Only rarely does the author slip into sentimentality. Much more often, she recognizes the implicit humor in her characters while valuing their dignity. Now I want to read more by this author.
If you like insipid family yarns and the nattering of old women, if you're charmed by homespun wisdom and wowed by ordinary rural New England folk saying (rarely doing) ordinary rural New England things, and if you like literature to be a gentle balm, a comforter, a restorative herbal tea naturally sweetened with honey, served lukewarm so that you barely notice it while imbibing, then you will probably like this book. I loathed it.
I know this is not everyone's cup of tea, but this was such a quick and insightful read. I absolutely ADORED the gossip and storytelling. I think it's really important that the older community in Dunnet Landing (and everywhere else) are considered and fully formed in discussions like this. It's wise, tear jerking at times, and just so darn realistic. I love these ladies and the select men that appear. They are all unique yet I love them all the same.
The Country of the Pointed Firs was first published in 1896, when Sarah Orne Jewett was about 47 years old. The only thing I had previously read by Sarah Orne Jewett was “The White Heron,” which seems to be the short story that is always chosen for the anthologies. It is a fine story, but it seems to be a rather limited example of Jewett’s writing, which is otherwise so full of human interactions and details of social life in coastal Maine.
The details are the glory of this book. I learn what it was like to live in another time, and I see fascinating characters portrayed with love and truth, their flaws described with humor rather than judgment.
Here are some examples of details about mundane life that are striking to a modern show more reader:
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Then there are the cute interpersonal insights:
And finally, the philosophical musings that sometimes seem a bit too grand, but still never fail to keep you thinking about things:
In the introduction, the editor says that Willa Cather chose this, when asked, as one of three American novels “deserving of a long, long life,” along with The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn. I wonder which authors of our time, 100 years from now, will prove to have captured the world with such sensitivity and thoughtfulness? show less
The details are the glory of this book. I learn what it was like to live in another time, and I see fascinating characters portrayed with love and truth, their flaws described with humor rather than judgment.
Here are some examples of details about mundane life that are striking to a modern show more reader:
I found my luncheon ready on the table in the little entry, wrapped in its shining old homespun napkin, and as if by way of special consolation, there was a stone bottle of Mrs. Todd’s best spruce beer, with a long piece of cod line wound round it by which it could be lowered for coolness into the deep schoolhouse well.
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“Truth is, I’ve been off visitin’; there’s an old Indian footpath leadin’ over towards the Back Shore through the great heron swamp that anybody can’t travel over all summer. You have to seize your time some day just now, while the low ground’s summer-dried as it is to-day, and before the fall rains set in.”
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“It’s a dreadful long way to go with a horse; you have to go ‘most as far as the old Bowden place an’ turn off to the left, a master long, rough road, and then you have to turn right round as soon as you get there if you mean to get home before nine o’clock at night. But to strike across country from here, there’s plenty o’ time in the shortest day, and you can have a good hour or two’s visit beside; ’tain’t but a very few miles, and it’s pretty all the way along.”
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“No,” said Mrs. Hand, speaking wistfully,―“no, we never were in the habit of keeping Christmas at our house. Mother died when we were all young; she would have been the one to keep up with all new ideas, but father and grandmother were old-fashioned folks, and―well, you know how ’twas then, Miss Pendexter: nobody took much notice of the day except to wish you a Merry Christmas.”
Then there are the cute interpersonal insights:
“You must have felt very tired,” said I, eagerly listening.
“I was ‘most beat out, with watchin’ an’ tendin’ and all,” answered Mrs. Todd, with as much sympathy in her voice as if she were speaking of another person.
And finally, the philosophical musings that sometimes seem a bit too grand, but still never fail to keep you thinking about things:
More than this one cannot give to a young State for its enlightenment; the sea captains and the captains’ wives of Maine knew something of the wide world, and never mistook their native parishes for the whole instead of a part thereof; they knew not only Thomaston and Castine and Portland, but London and Bristol and Bordeaux, and the strange-mannered harbors of the China Sea.
In the introduction, the editor says that Willa Cather chose this, when asked, as one of three American novels “deserving of a long, long life,” along with The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn. I wonder which authors of our time, 100 years from now, will prove to have captured the world with such sensitivity and thoughtfulness? show less
It could take you a day to read The Country of the Painted Firs. A mere 88 pages in length, you could spend just an afternoon with Ms. Jewett's novel. That being said, I urge you to take more time with this sweet little book. This is portrait of turn of the century coastal Maine living at its simplest and most honest. Jewett illustrates a time when hospitality, good manners, friendship and community mattered most. While there is not much of a plot, the characters are carefully crafted. Today, the people you meet throughout all of Maine are just as colorful and hard working as they were in Jewett's fictional town of Dunnet Landing. The statement, "One trade helps another" as one character says, is as true today as it was in 1896 when show more Country of the Pointed Firs was first published. show less
Jewett’s novel The Country of the Pointed Firs is the culmination of the regional characters, themes, and techniques that Jewett explored for so many years. It is a composite novel organized around alternating currents of separation and reunion, Jewett never wrote a conventionally-plotted novel, and in this tale a visiting writer-narrator from the city is slowly changed from an outsider into an initiated insider in the life of the largely female community of Dunnet Landing, a tiny seacoast village in Maine. The first chapter, titled “Return”, represents a reunion of sorts in that the narrator is returning to a place with which she previously fell in love. After that very short opening she is quickly drawn into the world of her show more landlady, Mrs. Almira Todd, the local herbalist who seems to possess a special spiritual outlook.
Soon the narrator feels the need to separate so that she can complete the writing project she brought with her. After listening to a strange tale about a limbo-like “waiting place” between this world and the next in the fog-bound arctic regions, the narrator reunites with Mrs. Todd, and they both discover that their relationship has improved in mutual consideration and empathy as a result of the separation. They have achieved a balance between the basic human needs for both connection and separation. This alternating pattern of separation and reunion continues in a number of different ways throughout the novel, ending with the narrator’s departure from Dunnet Landing.
Dunnet Landing and the surrounding country is populated with charming characters whose stories fill the spaces between the description of the lovely Maine north country. One of those characters, Captain Littlepage, had time for both sailing and reading. The latter activity was evidently also a pastime of the narrator who dotted the narrative with references to Shakespeare, Milton, and others.
The scenery is captured in moments like this:
"We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water's edge."(p. 33)
The chill in the air on winter nights was tempered by the heat from a Franklin Stove (no doubt very much like the one in my sister's home in the high country of northeastern Nevada). One of the best moments in the story was the Bowden family reunion that brought together many of the people from the area in a way that you can only experience in small out of the way communities like Dunnet Landing.
The Country of the Pointed Firs was greeted with strongly positive reviews. Indeed, a few years later, Jewett's friend Willa Cather would rate it as one of the three great classics of American literature (the other two being The Scarlet Letter and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). I'm not sure I agree completely with Cather, but this is a fine short novel depicting late nineteenth century Americana. show less
Soon the narrator feels the need to separate so that she can complete the writing project she brought with her. After listening to a strange tale about a limbo-like “waiting place” between this world and the next in the fog-bound arctic regions, the narrator reunites with Mrs. Todd, and they both discover that their relationship has improved in mutual consideration and empathy as a result of the separation. They have achieved a balance between the basic human needs for both connection and separation. This alternating pattern of separation and reunion continues in a number of different ways throughout the novel, ending with the narrator’s departure from Dunnet Landing.
Dunnet Landing and the surrounding country is populated with charming characters whose stories fill the spaces between the description of the lovely Maine north country. One of those characters, Captain Littlepage, had time for both sailing and reading. The latter activity was evidently also a pastime of the narrator who dotted the narrative with references to Shakespeare, Milton, and others.
The scenery is captured in moments like this:
"We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water's edge."(p. 33)
The chill in the air on winter nights was tempered by the heat from a Franklin Stove (no doubt very much like the one in my sister's home in the high country of northeastern Nevada). One of the best moments in the story was the Bowden family reunion that brought together many of the people from the area in a way that you can only experience in small out of the way communities like Dunnet Landing.
The Country of the Pointed Firs was greeted with strongly positive reviews. Indeed, a few years later, Jewett's friend Willa Cather would rate it as one of the three great classics of American literature (the other two being The Scarlet Letter and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). I'm not sure I agree completely with Cather, but this is a fine short novel depicting late nineteenth century Americana. show less
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Author Information
74+ Works 3,834 Members
Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett was born in South Berwick, Maine on September 3, 1849. Unable to attend school because of arthritis, she learned about coastal life in New England as she accompanied her father, a doctor, on his rounds. He encouraged both her reading and her writing. When she began submitting fiction in 1867, using the pseudonyms A. D. show more Eliot, Alice Eliot, and Sarah C. Sweet, her chosen topic was often the life and people of her native, rural Maine. Her first published story appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1869 and her first short story collection, Deephaven, was published in 1877. Her first novel, A Country Doctor was published in 1884. Her other works include A Marsh Island (1885), A White Heron and Other Stories (1886), A Native of Winby (1893), Tales of New England (1894) and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). She stopped writing in 1902, after a fall left her with severe head injuries. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage on June 24, 1909. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories
- Original publication date
- 1896
- First words
- There was something about the coast town of Dunnet which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages of eastern Maine.
- Original language
- English
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- 1,190
- Popularity
- 20,884
- Reviews
- 30
- Rating
- (3.91)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 22
- ASINs
- 26