Anxiety and Environment as Narrative Manifestations of Local Color in Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron”

Abstract

This paper examines Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron” by applying Sigmund Freud’s concept of anxiety. While the bulk of previous studies tackles the feminist attributes of the story, this study looks into it through psychoanalytic lens. The study’s main objective is to explore the role of environmental nature to alleviate the protagonist’s, Sylvia, anxiety developed by her accumulated fear of over-hunting. Therefore, the study’s methodology will be a qualitative study of three interrelated elements i.e., characters, setting, and the narrative point of view. In this respect, the follows a close reading of these elements in order to demonstrate how Jewett employs meticulous reginal depictions of Maine. As such, she offers the reader with vivid local color perspective of people’s response to deterioration in the immediate vicinity of their environmental milieus. Hence, the Freudian concept of anxiety will be utilized to interpret to protagonist’s attempts to save her natural circumferences from hunting threatening perils engulfing their dwelling places.