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by Sarah Orne Jewett (Author)
A Marsh Island has not fared well among Jewett's works. Critics have given it almost no attention at all. Except for Margaret Roman in Sarah Orne Jewett: Reconstructing Gender, most of the few people who have reported reading it have seen it as one of Jewett's lesser works. Below are two typical evaluations of the novel. As I have prepared this work for the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project, I have found much to like about it. I have wondered whether previous readers have made too much of the love story and too little of the story of the artist finding himself, which seems obviously to be a version of Jewett's own entering into her vocation from a privileged social position.Below are two well-expressed and typical evaluations, presented in order to help point the question posed by the reception of this novel so far. Has it deserved its obscurity? . The last chapters of"A Marsh Island" are printed in the June Atlantic. It has been a pleasant and readable story, but I fancy that critics will be disappointed in it, after the expectations raised by "A Country Doctor." That book showed so marked a superiority over " Deephaven", and Miss Jewett's short stories, that we surely had a right to look for something unusually good in " A Marsh Island." In style, the new book shows some gain -- an added ease in description, a more skilful treatment of dialect, and an independence in the choice of details which brings out more clearly than ever Miss Jewell's strong individuality. But this gain is growth rather than artistic development, and it is not accompanied by any improvement in the matter of the story. Miss Jewett always writes with a purpose. In "A Country Doctor", she set herself the task of answering Miss Phelps and Mr. Howells, the authors of "Dr. Zay " and "Dr. Breen's Practice", by showing another and, as she believed, a fairer view of the question at issue, -- whether or not women could make successful doctors. Mr Howells, who always chooses to picture weakness rather than strength, and who has never yet given an encouraging answer to any social problem, selected for his typical female physician" (no wonder that they do not succeed while we call them that) a dependent, irresolute woman, who began the practice of her profession with no appreciation of the difficulties before her, and yielded to the very first obstacle in her path...... Sarah Orne Jewett (September 3, 1849 - June 24, 1909) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for her local color works set along or near the southern seacoast of Maine. Jewett is recognized as an important practitioner of American literary regionalism. Jewett's family had been residents of New England for many generations, and Sarah Orne Jewett was born in South Berwick, Maine.Her father was a doctor specializing in "obstetrics and diseases of women and children." and Jewett often accompanied him on his rounds, becoming acquainted with the sights and sounds of her native land and its people.As treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that developed in early childhood, Jewett was sent on frequent walks and through them also developed a love of nature. In later life, Jewett often visited Boston, where she was acquainted with many of the most influential literary figures of her day; but she always returned to South Berwick, small seaports near which were the inspiration for the towns of "Deephaven" and "Dunnet Landing" in her stories. Jewett was educated at Miss Olive Rayne's school and then at Berwick Academy, graduating in 1866. She supplemented her education through an extensive family library. Jewett was "never overtly religious," but after she joined the Episcopal church in 1871, she explored less conventional religious ideas. ...
