Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron” tells the story of a little girl who needs to make a decision that will affect her small little world with whichever choice she makes. Jewett looks at the diverse relationship between the girl, Sylvia, and her environment. While looking at the constant environment, Jewett also brings to light the idea of marriage and the role it plays in a young girl’s mind. This also brings out the question of where one might call home. Is it the place that one was born or somewhere a person feels the most alive?
Sylvia’s connection to the environment plays a deep role throughout the story. Jewett has it be known that Sylvia is most at home in the woods, “‘There ain’t a foot o’ ground she don’t know her way over, and the wild creatures counts her one o’ themselves” (410) This shows the friendships between the different animals of the forest and Sylvia, and these seem to be the only friend that she has. This fact is made clear in the short story, “as the child had no playmates she lent herself to this amusement with a good deal of zest.” (408) In this scene, Sylvia is playing with a cow that she calls a “valued companion” (408) who she could play with all day, until her energy is spent. Another example of her connection is when she is climbing the tree trying to spot the white heron’s nest. Sylvia does not need light to know the way, she had ventured through the woods many times, “they were going away from whatever light there was, and striking deep into the woods, but their feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not” (408). She was one with the forest. Sylvia planned on climbing the tall pine tree that she was sure she could see the whole world from if climbed at the break of day, “and easily discover from whence the white heron flew, and mark the place, and find the hidden nest?”(412). However this was her first time climbing that high on the tree, and she needed to transfer over to the pine tree after climbing an oak. This would be a very difficult task for even the most experienced climber in the daytime, but Sylvia was doing it at night. She wasn’t an ordinary climber though because this was her small world that no one could take away from her. She has chosen the forest as her home, and the forest chose her back. So as she was climbing, it seemed that the tree was holding Sylvia up, as one of its own. Sylvia was then able to find the white heron’s nest that she would need to take the hunter to, but first she needed to make an important decision. Jewett made Sylvia decide if she was going to betray the place she loved or if she was going to let down a possible suitor. Sylvia didn’t need a suitor though as she was only nine years old. Jewett made a strange decision for the time by having Sylvia let the man get away. This might also be in part because her grandmother is the one person in her life that she can count on besides the environment. Jewett shares that Sylvia hadn’t lived in the woods for a long time, but it was a good time when she was there as she was able to get to know the land so well. “Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she had never been alive at all before she came to live at the farm”(409). She had felt that her life had begun when she had gotten to the forest. She also said “that this place was a beautiful place to live in, and she never should wish to go home” (409). It seemed as if Sylvia’s guardians back home had made a good choice in letting her live with her grandmother. She didn’t have a lot of social capabilities, which is seen when Sylvia meets the hunter. Also she had had a bad experience with a boy in her old town, so she wouldn’t easily trust a boy again soon, “…if everything went on in the noisy town just the same as when she was there; the thought of the great red-faced boy who used to chase and frighten her made her hurry along the path to escape from the shadow of the trees” (409). It’s only natural for her to be frightened of the hunter when she first meets him in the dark.
The hunter interferes with the constant environment that Sylvia has gotten used to. Jewett uses words like “determined” and “somewhat aggressive” to describe the hunter’s whistle the first time that Sylvia heard it (409). She was even worried that her grandmother might be mad because she was bringing a stranger home in the dark. However the grandmother isn’t as afraid as Sylvia might want her to be. This might be because it was custom for girls to have suitors early in life, and her grandmother could see this as an opportunity which might not happen again for a while. Sylvia lost her fear of him when the hunter started to talk about the different birds that he had in his collection. She walked with him all day, “… he did not once make her troubled or afraid except when he brought down some unsuspecting singing creature from its bough” (411). All this time made Sylvia start to see him as a suitor just like her grandmother did, “… the woman’s heart, asleep in the child, was vaguely thrilled by a dream of love” (412). Jewett shows that Sylvia might not be so sheltered as thought to believe because she started to understand what might happen if she were to help this man. Jewett leads us to believe that Sylvia might tell the hunter what she knows, but gives clues to foreshadow the end of story, “… but she did not lead the guest, she only followed, and there was no such thing as speaking first. The sound of her own unquestioned voice would have terrified her,– it was hard enough to answer yes or no when there was need of that” (412). The environment was still too important to Syliva, as she probably feared that she might lead him to the nest without realizing it. Sylvia chose to put her love for the forest above her thoughts of love she might have for the hunter. She didn’t want to live with the guilt of being responsible for the hand who kills one of the herons, as “she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away” (414). She chose her “friends”, the birds and mammals of the forest, over some boy she just met.
The environment that Sylvia lives in affects the choices that she makes. Jewett wrote a brilliant story that shows a great connection between where one was raised and where they decided to call hom, and how those places don’t have to be one and the same. It teaches a great lesson about not letting social obligations stop someone from protecting the place they call home. This comes as a strange twist of the time period that Jewett lives in and writes about. It would have been customary for the hunter to have been a match for Sylvia, but Jewett wanted to push the boundaries of what her heroine could do. She didn’t want it to be just another story about the outside world polluting a little girl’s home. Jewett had Sylvia stay loyal to the place she called home.
Works Cited
Jewett, Sarah Orne. “A White Heron.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Robert S. Levine, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2021, 408-414
