Aspects of Initiation in Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: Who does not know the adventurous stories of characters like Huckleberry Finn or Holden Caulfield - the Bildungsroman is quite a popular genre of American fiction. Generally portraying an adolescent protagonist on his way towards maturity, the image of coming-of-age, alternatively called initiation, is also a common topic of short stories. These short stories basically deal with the protagonist's shocking confrontation with (usually) one hitherto unknown aspect of the adult world, which offers the protagonist the possibility of development and "growing up".

A short story that contains such an initiation process is Sarah One Jewett's "A White Heron". Sylvia, the nine year old protagonist, gets confronted with female suppression in a patriarchal society, embodied by a nameless hunter who tries to find a rare bird in order to kill it for his collection. Feeling more and more attracted by the hunter due to the awakening of her own sexuality, Sylvia wants to please him and is tempted to reveal the bird's hide after having found it herself when climbing a tree. However, the protagonist decides to remain silent at the end of the story and not to give the bird's life away.

Literary scholars have argued that, with regard to the protagonist's initiation, there are generally two readings of the story: on the one hand, one can read it as Sylvia's successful process of self-discovery and her initiation into the secret of nature, but on the other hand it can also be read as Sylvia's anti-initiation into sexuality and society.

This paper is going to argue that these two readings of the story are not incompatible, but that Sylvia's initiation occurs on two different levels within the story and that her successful initiation into the secret of nature even requires her rejection of submitting herself to male dominance and her anti-initiation into (hetero-)sexuality.