Eunice and the Jade Gods: Jewett's Religious Rhetoric in A Country Doctor

Abstract

When Nan Prince, the protagonist of Sarah Orne Jewett's A Country Doctor (1884), travels to Dunport for a stay with Anna Prince, her only aunt, from whom she was estranged at birth, she befriends Eunice Fraley and comes into conflict with Eunice's mother, Mrs. Fraley. At this point, Nan has nearly completed her medical studies and plans to become a physi cian. Eunice, who is almost sixty years old, sympathizes with and admires Nan's approach to life. Mrs. Fraley, however, takes it her self to confront Nan publicly concerning her impious and unnatural choice of a profession. Eunice places herself between these two power ful models of feminine life. In an odd but telling fragment, followed by a sentence, she confides to Nan, Though I believe every word you said about a girl's having an independence of her own. It is a great blessing to have always had such a person as my mother to lean upon (338). Eunice is attracted by Nan's independence, but she feels gratitude and duty toward her mother, who has taken care of her in exchange for a life of service. Eunice's syntax underlines her sense that these two attitudes cannot be reconciled.