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The Country of the Pointed Firs

Sarah Orne Jewett

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THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS

By Sarah Orne Jewett


Note:

SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909) was born and died in South Berwick, Maine.
Her father was the region's most distinguished doctor and, as a child,
Jewett often accompanied him on his round of patient visits. She began
writing poetry at an early age and when she was only 19 her short story
"Mr. Bruce" was accepted by the Atlantic Monthly. Her association with
that magazine continued, and William Dean Howells, who was editor at
that time, encouraged her to publish her first book, Deephaven (1877),
a collection of sketches published earlier in the Atlantic Monthly.
Through her friendship with Howells, Jewett became acquainted with
Boston's literary elite, including Annie Fields, with whom she developed
one of the most intimate and lasting relationships of her life.

The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is considered Jewett's finest
work, described by Henry James as her "beautiful little quantum of
achievement." Despite James's diminutives, the novel remains a classic.
Because it is loosely structured, many critics view the book not as
a novel, but a series of sketches; however, its structure is unified
through both setting and theme. Jewett herself felt that her strengths
as a writer lay not in plot development or dramatic tension, but in
character development. Indeed, she determined early in her career to
preserve a disappearing way of life, and her novel can be read as a
study of the effects of isolation and hardship on the inhabitants who
lived in the decaying fishing villages along the Maine coast.

Jewett died in 1909, eight years after an accident that effectively
ended her writing career. Her reputation had grown during her lifetime,
extending far beyond the bounds of the New England she loved.



Contents

              I  The Return
             II  Mrs. Todd
            III  The Schoolhouse
             IV  At the Schoolhouse Window
              V  Captain Littlepage
             VI  The Waiting Place
            VII  The Outer Island
           VIII  Green Island
             IX  William
              X  Where Pennyroyal Grew
             XI  The Old Singers
            XII  A Strange Sail
           XIII  Poor Joanna
            XIV  The Hermitage
             XV  On Shell-heap Island
            XVI  The Great Expedition
           XVII  A Country Road
          XVIII  The Bowden Reunion
            XIX  The Feast's End
             XX  Along Shore
            XXI  The Backward View





I. The Return

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.

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