Sarah Orne Jewett’s short story A White Heron is a tale which vividly depicts the Maine countryside and it’s habitat. The two main characters attitudes towards, and relationship with, nature are stunning examples of Regionalisms. It is through these characters that the reader sees the conflict between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values often symbolized in The Regional literary movement.
The story opens with Sylvia, the main character, “driving home her cow (Jewett 71), a chore which she had come to love and grow used to in the time she had been living with her grandmother. Sylvia’s happiness in country life depicts the increasing sentimental attitude of the time that the industrialization of America might not be a good thing. There was a fear developing that the simple ways of farming and homesteading might decline in the face of America’s rapid growth and progression towards machinery. In these years, following The Civil War, there was controversy over the desires of some to keep balance with the natural pastoral life and of others to modernize America. For Sylvia, it was clear that leaving the city to live with her grandmother in her farm house was an excellent decision “Everbody 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 never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm” (72).
The Hunter’s introduction into the story is in stark contrast to Sylvia’s quiet respectfulness. “Suddenly this little woods-girl is horror-stricken to hear a clear whistle not very far away. Not a birds-whistle, which would have a sort of friendliness, but a boy’s whistle, determined, and somewhat aggressive” (73). It is this aggressiveness that continues to surround the Hunter throughout the story. While Sylvia knows the woodland creature through immersion “There ain’t a foot o’ ground she don’t know her way over, and the wild creatures...