The Country of the Pointed Firs

A sharply observed, affectionate, and unsentimental portrait of life in a Maine fishing village, The Country of the Pointed Firs is Sarah Orne Jewett’s most enduring work, and commonly regarded as the finest example of American regionalist literature in the nineteenth century. It was originally published in four installments of the Atlantic Monthly in 1896; this Broadview Edition is based on the Atlantic serialization and also includes the four other stories set in Dunnet Landing.

The critical introduction situates the text in its historical, cultural, and literary milieu, attending to its place in Jewett’s oeuvre and in her biography. Appendices include earlier “local color” writing by Jewett and others, Jewett’s letters, and contemporary reviews of the novel.

1100036968
The Country of the Pointed Firs

A sharply observed, affectionate, and unsentimental portrait of life in a Maine fishing village, The Country of the Pointed Firs is Sarah Orne Jewett’s most enduring work, and commonly regarded as the finest example of American regionalist literature in the nineteenth century. It was originally published in four installments of the Atlantic Monthly in 1896; this Broadview Edition is based on the Atlantic serialization and also includes the four other stories set in Dunnet Landing.

The critical introduction situates the text in its historical, cultural, and literary milieu, attending to its place in Jewett’s oeuvre and in her biography. Appendices include earlier “local color” writing by Jewett and others, Jewett’s letters, and contemporary reviews of the novel.

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The Country of the Pointed Firs

The Country of the Pointed Firs

The Country of the Pointed Firs

The Country of the Pointed Firs

Overview

A sharply observed, affectionate, and unsentimental portrait of life in a Maine fishing village, The Country of the Pointed Firs is Sarah Orne Jewett’s most enduring work, and commonly regarded as the finest example of American regionalist literature in the nineteenth century. It was originally published in four installments of the Atlantic Monthly in 1896; this Broadview Edition is based on the Atlantic serialization and also includes the four other stories set in Dunnet Landing.

The critical introduction situates the text in its historical, cultural, and literary milieu, attending to its place in Jewett’s oeuvre and in her biography. Appendices include earlier “local color” writing by Jewett and others, Jewett’s letters, and contemporary reviews of the novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781551118345
Publisher: Broadview Press
Publication date: 11/13/2009
Series: Broadview Editions
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 294
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Deborah Carlin is Professor of American Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Read an Excerpt

There was something about the coast town of Dunnet which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages of eastern Maine. Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges by the Landing. These houses made the most of their seaward view, and there was a gayety and determined floweriness in their bits of garden ground; the small-paned high windows in the peaks of their steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the far sea-line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore and its background of spruces and balsam firs. When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

After a first brief visit made two or three summers before in the course of a yachting cruise, a lover of Dunnet Landing returned to find the unchanged shores of the pointed firs, the same quaintness of the village with its elaborate conventionalities; all that mixture of remoteness, and childish certainty of being the centre of civilization of which her affectionate dreams had told. One evening in June, a single passenger landed upon the steamboat wharf. The tide was high, there was a fine crowd of spectators, and the younger portion of the company followed her with subdued excitement up the narrow street of the salt-aired, white-clapboarded little town.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Sarah Orne Jewett: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Country of the Pointed Firs
The Dunnet Landing Stories

  • “The Queen’s Twin” (1899)
    “A Dunnet Shepherdess” (1899)
    “The Foreigner” (1900)
    “William’s Wedding” (1910)

Appendix A: Before The Country of the Pointed Firs:
Precursors and Influences

  1. Sarah Orne Jewett, Preface to Deephaven (1893)
  2. Sarah Orne Jewett, Chapter Five, “The Captains,” from Deephaven (1893)
  3. Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey,” Chapter Four of The Pearl of Orr’s Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862)

Appendix B: Local Color Literature: Nineteenth-Century Formulations and Definitions

  1. William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Study” (1887)
  2. Hamlin Garland, “Local Color in Art” (1894)
  3. Bret Harte, “The Rise of the ‘Short Story’” (1899)

Appendix C: Selected Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett

  1. To Annie Fields (June 1885)
  2. From a letter to Annie Fields (12 October 1890)
  3. From a letter to Annie Fields (1899 or 1890)
  4. To Willa Sibert Cather (27 November 1908)
  5. To Willa Sibert Cather (13 December 1908)

Appendix D: Reviews of The Country of the Pointed Firs

  1. Overland Monthly (29 January 1897)
  2. Atlantic Monthly (February 1897)
  3. The Critic (13 February 1897)
  4. The Nation (15 April 1897)
  5. Alice Brown, Book Buyer (15 October 1897)

Appendix E: Profiles of Sarah Orne Jewett

  1. Anonymous, “Miss Jewett” (January 1894)
  2. Anonymous, “Pleasant Day With Miss Jewett” (August 1895)

Select Bibliography

Reading Group Guide

1. The Country of the Pointed Firs is not so much a novel as small episodes strung together. What do you think Jewett was trying to accomplish using this loose structure? What is she saying about New England country life?

2. Consider the narrator's view of the "quaint" village people in the beginning of the novel compared to her view as she leaves Dunnet Landing. How and when did her worldly view change of the small village and villagers?

3. Some critics argue Jewett was simply romanticizing the idealization of the simple life. However, take into account Mrs. Todd's herb gathering, Captain Littlepage's "quirks, " and the narrator's friendship with the inhabitants of Dunnet Landing. Do you feel the core of this novel is romantic, or humanistic and even religious?

4. The work heavily relies on four symbolic contrasts-the funeral, the sea, the outer islands, and the song sparrows. How do these four symbols work and contrast with each other? Are they relaying the theme of the novel, and if so, what exactly is that theme?

5. Consider Captain Littlepage's "spells, " William's inability to function in society, and Joanna's self-exile to Shell-heap Island. Is Jewett commenting on what small town life can do to a person's mind, or is she simply romanticizing life on the sea?

6. Consider the narrator's reaction to Mrs. Todd's tale of Joanna. Do you feel the narrator relates to Joanna, or is she just simply sympathetic to the shunted woman?

7. In Jewett's time, alternative medicine was vehemently looked down upon while many women such as midwives were persecuted for their practices. Yet, Mrs. Toddworks alongside the village doctor, and even prescribes pennyroyal (a known abortive). Is Jewett trying to give respectability to a dying practice, or is she satirizing a "country practice"?

8. The Country of the Pointed Firs is often branded as local-color literature. Do you feel Jewett was nostalgically writing about her beloved Maine, or was she trying to contrast New England with the rest of America and connect the "good old days" with the more fast-paced, industrial America growing around her?

9. In what ways does Jewett defy the prevailing nineteenth-century gender relations, namely the separation of women's and men's lives and women's sphere in the home and public? In what ways does she embrace those views?

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