SO Jewett Nature :: essays papers

SO Jewett constitutionThe Conception of Nature and its Relationship to Gender in S.O. Jewetts fib A White Heron. Nature, in the common sense, refers to the essences unchanged by man From the very first steps of the new settlers on the American continent, its unfounded nature, full of smell of the forests, of freshness of the air, and of almost prelapsarian variety of botany and fauna, came to be associated with unlimited wilderness. However, under the vigorous attack of developing civilisation the untouched virginity of the New World soon began to recede, irretrievably losing its wild self-governing beauty. For a great number of American writers this confrontation of nature with refining became a theme for the never-ending discussion. The short storey of an American writer regionalist Sarah Orne Jewett, A White Heron, is one of the works written on this touching American theme. In th is story the author presents the conflict by juxtaposing a precise country-girl Sylvia, who lives in harmony with nature, to the bird-hunter from a town. She does so by identification of a girl with nature and boys with civilization. While the girl stands for the cleared femininity of natural world, who loves and cares about the creatures around, the boys are associated with aggression, danger and warlike elements of civilization. therefrom she implies the idea that nature is just like a harmless superficial girl just exists in peace with every tiny topic around, while civilization, like a young man with a gun, by its utilitarian love for nature senselessly annihilates the artless creation.From the opening lines of the story Sarah Orne Jewett ushers her readers into the magic world of untouched beauty of the New England wilderness (WH, p.200) the woodland were already filled with shadows one June evening (WH, p.197). The reader is immediately charmed and has no choice but t o proceed, to walk further, among the trees, until he meets a little girl, walking by the forest path together with her plodding (WH, p.