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A review by andrewaackroyd
The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
5.0
Oh my goodnessssss, this was so good. Elizabeth Strout could never. Jewett put her whole Sarah Orne JUSSY into this book.
A note on the edition: It feels a little disingenuous at best (phobic at worst) to have a (presumably) straight writer/academic (Anita Shreve) write an introduction that reads. “Jewett herself was unmarried when she wrote The Country of the Pointed Firs and remained so until her death from a heart attack in 1909. There is no evidence that she ever had a love affair” (XV). Shreve discounts Jewett’s open Boston Marriage to Annie Fields, a fact that leads to fascinating conversations about same-sex love and relationships (specifically between women) in small-town America before the rampant pathologization of homosexuality by the sexological revolution. Her sapphic relationships don’t have only biographical implications. We can see them clearly in the central storyline about Mrs. Todd and the narrator. They live together, experience a “deeper intimacy,” and “fell under the spell” of each other’s presence. Their parting at the novel’s close is reminiscent of Latour and Vaillant in Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, creating a queer tradition of loss and failure. Cather cited Jewett as one of their central influences and one of the three masters of American literature. Throughout the piece, multiple women spend all their time together such as Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Fosdick, and men spend all their time fishing together, showing a society dominated by homo-sociality/sexuality that goes unquestioned and often celebrated. Far from an outcast, Mrs. Todd is widely celebrated despite her sapphic relationships. Furthermore, there are multiple characters, which Shreve does touch on, that are conceptualized androgynously, making this book important to trans/gender studies as well. The Country of the Pointed Firs is a 19th-century queer novel and should be treated as such by the publishers. Erasing this facet of Jewett's life in Shreve's forward only furthers the historical destruction of queer narratives and is deeply uncomfortable.
A note on the edition: It feels a little disingenuous at best (phobic at worst) to have a (presumably) straight writer/academic (Anita Shreve) write an introduction that reads. “Jewett herself was unmarried when she wrote The Country of the Pointed Firs and remained so until her death from a heart attack in 1909. There is no evidence that she ever had a love affair” (XV). Shreve discounts Jewett’s open Boston Marriage to Annie Fields, a fact that leads to fascinating conversations about same-sex love and relationships (specifically between women) in small-town America before the rampant pathologization of homosexuality by the sexological revolution. Her sapphic relationships don’t have only biographical implications. We can see them clearly in the central storyline about Mrs. Todd and the narrator. They live together, experience a “deeper intimacy,” and “fell under the spell” of each other’s presence. Their parting at the novel’s close is reminiscent of Latour and Vaillant in Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, creating a queer tradition of loss and failure. Cather cited Jewett as one of their central influences and one of the three masters of American literature. Throughout the piece, multiple women spend all their time together such as Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Fosdick, and men spend all their time fishing together, showing a society dominated by homo-sociality/sexuality that goes unquestioned and often celebrated. Far from an outcast, Mrs. Todd is widely celebrated despite her sapphic relationships. Furthermore, there are multiple characters, which Shreve does touch on, that are conceptualized androgynously, making this book important to trans/gender studies as well. The Country of the Pointed Firs is a 19th-century queer novel and should be treated as such by the publishers. Erasing this facet of Jewett's life in Shreve's forward only furthers the historical destruction of queer narratives and is deeply uncomfortable.