Romanticism In A White Heron By Sarah Orne Jewett

In A White Heron , the author, Sarah Orne Jewett, describes a young girl who interacts with a number of elements that cause her to discover who she is and what she stands for. Sylvia, being only nine years old and coming from a large family from the demanding city life , is moved to her grandmother’s remote farm where she finds herself to be comfortably isolated from the rest of the world. This, in fact, suits her lack of social ability, and so she finds herself becoming one with nature: both the plants and animals. When a young hunter, with whom she comes to admire greatly, comes along and tries to destroy apart of ‘her’, she finds herself in a conflicting position. Sarah Jewett’s writings had mainly avoided romantic topics by producing stories about people who use logic and independence over romantic inclinations. The author, Sarah Orne Jewett works to discern this sentimentality throughout this short story by using elements such as theme, internal conflict, and realism.

The consistent theme presented in A White Heron ties together all of the elements the story has to offer. This theme is the avoidance of sentimentality. The author offers this theme to show Sylvia’s appreciation for what she has (punctuation) as well as remaining true to her own moral conduct in the face of her romantic feelings for the young hunter. As Sylvia, having discovered emotions she is unfamiliar with, “[watches] the young man with loving admiration”, (switch order of punctuations) she still cannot understand why he lives to destroy the very thing he seems to love the most (Jewett 67). Even though the stranger no longer appeals as a threat to Sylvia, she still finds herself questioning his motives. Knowing that he could provide a wealthier and h...

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...stent use of theme, internal conflict, and Realism adds a deeper meaning to the story. Every element works together to show Sylvia’s determination to disregard her romantic feelings and keep her integrity and loyalty to something that had shown her consistent love. Whereas the young man contradicted himself , Sylvia saw that the wilderness was beautiful from every direction she viewed it in. Compromising something as innocent (add a noun) would have caused her to feel guilty of the fact that she exposed something so pure. Nature is her resolution to happiness and anything that conflicted with that, such as the hunter, would have evidently made her unhappy. It is even repeated throughout the story, her ‘fear’ of people . Besides, when there was no one else that understood her and her social awkwardness, the wilderness offered her a place of refuge and a friend .