Interpretive Note on Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Essay

Interpretive Note on Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs - Essay Example The Country of the Pointed Firs is one such work, in which, Jewett subtly shows how women can live an independent life without following certain stereotypes. So, this paper analyzes how Jewett also focuses on women-dominated space, particularly their psychic. The Country of the Pointed Firs follows the trails of the unnamed narrator in the fictional town of Dunnet Landing, Maine. She is a writer from Boston, who comes to Dunnet Landing to complete the work she has started. Renting a room in the home of Mrs. Todd, she gets acclimatized to the area and becomes captivated by the old-fashioned community. Most of the town’s population are old people with ages ranging between sixty and ninety. All of them are ‘rich’ with many interesting experiences and thus they tell small stories or anecdotes about the town, the sea, as well as the town’s people, to the narrator thereby enriching the narrator’s experience. The narrator was overwhelmed by the experience with nostalgia flowing through her mind. In course of time, she strikes a ‘close relationship’ with Mrs. Todd and that gives another perspective to the work. In most of her works, Jewett, pushed by her wish to break all dichotomies, creates female characters who are strong, confident and independent. In The Country of the Pointed Firs, apart from the narrator character, the character who symbolized the above said positive virtues of woman is Mrs. Todd. This semiautobiographical novel follows a young woman writer, who while spending a summer Dunnett Landing and completing her work, comes in contact with a group of women. These women while telling many stories about the town, become emotionally attached to the writer. â€Å"There she is adopted into a loose knit group of women who weave a web of stories about the town, the surrounding islands and the folks who live, or lived, there.† (brothersjudd.com). They spend a lot of time close to each other, sharing good rapport and so