C. How it affects today's literature

III. The Country of the Pointed Firs

Sarah Orne Jewett, a native of Maine, was one of the first and most skilled members of the local color movement in literature. She was a novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. A country doctor's daughter, Jewett's experiences in accompanying her father on his calls had an important impressionable effect on the sensibility that later led her to write meaningful stories of New England character and experience. Anyone from another part of the United States, anyone from another part of the world who wants to understand New England would do well to read the stories of Sarah Orne Jewett.

Sarah Orne Jewett was born on September 3, 1849 in a small town called South Berwick, Maine. Her father was a distinguished country doctor who taught at Bowdoin College. Sarah'

Her writing style of "romanticized realism"is considered to be of the same class as that of Willa Cather and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

" Sarah Orne Jewett." In Twentieth Century Literary Criticism Vol 1 . Edited by Dedria Bryfonski and Phyllis Carmel Mendelson. Detroit:???, 1978, 359-369.

" Miss Jewett was no universal genius; she was intensely of her own time and place. She was ideally the person for just exactly the work she had to do. Born in exactly the right place for doing it," (Kunitz 418-420). According to Edward Garnett, "Miss Jewett's talent at its best is so quietly delicate, its spiritual aroma so subtle, that to come to it is like coming to one of the quiet beaches or woody hill-sides in Maine she so tenderly describes for us..." (Garnett 359). " Miss Jewett's work has often been criticized as nothing more than 'sketches,' with very little plot and therefore, not worthy of much critical study. Jewett herself realized this about her work, writing to her editor,

"We may grant that she is only a minor writer, that the kind of pleasure her work offers only remotely resembles the effect of great literature, that the insight she gives us into men and women is fragmentary," (Hicks 363). To the regional story, Sarah Orne Jewett brought understanding, knowledge, humor, and a thoroughly disciplined talent. At the time of her writing, the former way of life in Maine was coming to an end. She described this world realistically but leisurely and with sympathy. Sarah Orne Jewett in turn influenced Willa Cather, who was later to edit a collection of Jewett's stories.

Sarah Orne Jewett's influences include Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola, Leo Tolstoy, and Henry James. Her love of the seaport town in which she was born provided most of the source material she used for her stories. Her stories depict not only a love for Maine, but also a high level of admiration for that particular part of the country. She learned to love her country for what it was. Most importantly, she saw it as it was. Sarah Orne Jewett injects a great deal of realism into her stories. She was compelled to write by a longing to share her beloved countryside and its people to the world.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Country Firs, Orne Jewett, Miss Jewett's, Compton's CD-ROM, Fields Boston, Miss Jewett, College Sarah's, Henry James, Atlantic Monthly, sarah orne, Sarah Orne, orne jewett, sarah orne jewett, country firs, miss jewett, jewett sarah, jewett sarah orne, american writers, miss jewett's, local color movement, style writing, willa cather, triumph style, atlantic monthly published, 25 oct 1999,
Approximate Word count = 1630
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)