A Study Guide for Sarah Orne Jewett's "The Country of the Pointed Firs"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Sarah Orne Jewett's "The Country of the Pointed Firs," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535835961

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The Country of the Pointed Firs

Sarah Orne Jewett

1896

Introduction

The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is considered by many critics to be the masterpiece of Sarah Orne Jewett, one of the greatest local color writers of the nineteenth century. Jewett wrote stories and novels set in coastal fishing and shipbuilding towns of her native Maine. As in many of Jewett's stories, The Country of the Pointed Firs addresses themes of nostalgia, memory, and storytelling, as well as community, family, and friendship. Her character sketches of the aging population of seamen and the widows of seamen are inflected with the local Maine dialect, which she captured with accuracy and liveliness. In recent years, Jewett's works have been praised for their strong, independent, elderly female characters, of which her greatest creation is Mrs. Todd in The Country of the Pointed Firs.

In The Country of the Pointed Firs, the unnamed narrator is a writer from Boston who has rented a room for the summer in the home of Mrs. Todd in the fictional town of Dunnet Landing, Maine. Throughout the summer, the narrator is captivated by the quaint community of Dunnet Landing, populated by the elderly men and women of the declining shipping industry. Most of the people she meets are between the ages of sixty and ninety, and they all have stories to tell about the town, the sea, and the families who inhabit their tiny community.

Author Biography

Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett was born September 3, 1849, in South Berwick, a shipbuilding town inland from the Maine coast. Jewett suffered from arthritis as a girl and attended school only sporadically because of her ill health. Her real education came from her father, a doctor who often brought the young Jewett along with him on medical visits throughout the countryside. From these experiences, Jewett learned the art of detailed character observation. Her father also encouraged her to read the great works of American and European literature. At the age of sixteen she graduated from Berwick Academy.

Jewett's first story was published in a magazine when she was nineteen. Her real success began in