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Sarah Orne Jewett
was born on September 3, 1849 to an old New England family in South Berwick,
Maine, surrounded by the types of characters that appear in her stories: sea
captains, independent women, and country doctors. Jewett's adolescence is very
closely depicted in her novel A Country Doctor. Jewett and Nan Prince, the main character of the story, share the
characteristics of an autonomous upbringing ensued by an unusual adulthood.
Jewett was brought up among the superfluous books of her well-educated father’s
collection; she was practically nourished by the written word. Therefore, her
future legacy in the literary world had been inevitable. Her mother was
Caroline Frances and her father was Theodore Herman Jewett, a distinguished
doctor. She was the second of three daughters (Blanchard 23).
On Sept 3, 1902,
both Sarah and Rebecca Jewett, her sister, were in a serious a carriage wreck
when their horse tripped over a loose rock and stumbled. This horrific tragedy
succeeded in putting an early end to Jewett's writing career. Both Sarah and
Rebecca were thrown from the carriage, but while Rebecca underwent minor
injuries, Sarah suffered a concussion and some serious nervous damage to her neck.
There is speculation that perhaps she had a cracked vertebra, but it was never
officially diagnosed. Jewett was unable to continue writing due to pain, dizzy
spells, memory loss and an inability to concentrate for the seven years leading
up to her death (due to unrelated causes) on June 24, 1909 (Blanchard 349-362). The best of Jewett’s
fiction was inspired by the town in which she was born and raised, as well as the people around whom she was raised, and the
characters and settings of her works always resonated the world to which she was familiar. Jewett believed that her “local
attachments [were] stronger than any cat's that ever mewed (Matthiessen II)." In the state of Maine, the end of the importance
of clipper ships had led to the abandonment of shipyards and wharves. South Berwick, on the southern coast of Maine and border
of New Hampshire, became one of these towns, deserted by the youth and left abundant with older women. Jewett wrote about
this vanishing world and the isolated or the elderly who found deep meanings in local traditions and private experiences.
She wrote realistically but gently, creating what many critics regard as the best fictional narratives to come out of New
England during a period when regional writing flourished in the area (Matthiessen II-IV). This depiction of life in New England
is often referred to as “local color”. Local color is “generally understood to designate fiction of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that strives to represent the landscape, dialect, and folkways of some specific
region of the United States (Howard 366). Jewett’s education thrived as she was born into the provincial
elite. Related to the aristocratic Perry’s of Exeter, New Hampshire and the Jewett’s of Berwick, her lineage surrounded
her with an extended family of merchants, sea captains, doctors, and, most importantly, editors. From birth, Jewett had connections to some of the most highly influential people in
politics, education, and the arts. Although she lived through an economic depression of 1932, her family was virtually unaffected
by the downfall and she inherited enough money to live as an independent woman (Webb; Blanchard 23-40). For her elementary
education, Jewett attended Miss Rayne's school with Mary Jewett, one of her sisters. This education was furthered at Berwick
Academy from where Jewett graduated in 1865. It was during her studies at the academy, that Jewett was first introduced to
the writing's of Harriet Beecher Stowe whose The Pearl of Orr's Island is treasured by Jewett as a book which "conspired to channel
her esthetic energies" (Cary, 23).
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