From Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels and Stories
Also of Interest
Sarah Orne Jewett House, South Berwick, Maine (Historic New England)
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Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels and Stories
Deephaven • A Country Doctor • The Country of the Pointed Firs • Dunnet Landing stories • other stories and sketches • 937 pages
Paula Blanchard, in her biography of Sarah Orne Jewett, writes about a recurring character type found throughout the author’s fiction: “a succession of elderly women farmers, most of them having been widowed early and raising children alone.” The price of this precarious autonomy in the late nineteenth century could be sometimes devastating, as we see in “Going to Shrewsbury.” Jewett’s 1899 story portrays an endearing widow who, after forty-five years, loses her farm to a nefarious nephew who had “coaxed an’ over-persuaded” her late husband to use the property as collateral for a loan.Sarah Orne Jewett House, South Berwick, Maine (Historic New England)
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Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels and StoriesDeephaven • A Country Doctor • The Country of the Pointed Firs • Dunnet Landing stories • other stories and sketches • 937 pages
Suddenly homeless and dependent on the goodwill of others, Mrs. Peet takes her first-ever train-ride to a new and uncertain residence among relatives in the town of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Mrs. Peet’s looming resettlement, as the late scholar and critic Richard Cary notes, presents us with another theme found in many of Jewett’s stories: “The country represents a treasury of all that is good in the past; the city, all that is dreadful in the present. . . . Country women are reserved and self-sufficient; city women, volatile and helpless.” Or as Mrs. Peet herself says, “Town folks has got the upper hand o’ country folks, but with all their work an’ pride they can’t make a dandelion.”
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The train stopped at a way station with apparent unwillingness, and there was barely time for one elderly passenger to be hurried on board before a sudden jerk threw her almost off her unsteady old feet and we moved on. . . . If you don't see the full story below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.