Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Country of the Pointed Firs” is a short, meditative, plotless novella. But it is exquisite in its imagery. The narrator, an unnamed woman writer staying for the summer in a small coastal town in Maine, draws many analogies between the development of plants and the character and resilience of people. At times overly sentimental, the descriptions nonetheless are memorable and thought-provoking.
One of Orne Jewett’s most memorable characters is a minor one, Mrs. Blackett. The mother of Almira Todd, with whom the narrator lodges for the summer, we meet her but briefly on two occasions, but her presence is felt throughout the story. Living on a remote island with her socially isolated and recalcitrant adult son, Mrs. Blackett has none of the melancholy and angst that tend to pervade such remote and harsh environments. When the narrator meets her in the warm and beautiful summer, Mrs. Blackett’s disposition seems to mirror the weather. Yet, much of the year on their small island is relentlessly cold and dreary. Her vitality and energy, even at a quite advanced age, seem like perpetual summer in a place with so little cheerful sunshine.
Before the reader sees Mrs. Blackett, Orne Jewett offers a glimpse of her maternal affection. As Almira and the narrator approach the island by boat, Mrs. Blackett waves to the approaching boat and stokes the fire in anticipation of their arrival, which her daughter sees with joy. The narrator at first can’t see anything but then recounts, “I looked, and could see a tiny flutter in the doorway, but a quicker signal had made its way from the heart on short to the heart on the sea.”
Still quite far off, Almira wonders, “How do you suppose she knows it’s me?” She then reflects, “There, you never get over bein’ a child long’s you have a mother to go to.”
This sentimentality is surprising in the mouth of Mrs. Todd, a rather gruff and practical woman who lives independently in her widowhood and seems not to depend too much on anyone. Returning to her mother’s island, this softer side is seen.
Mrs. Blackett’s maternal nature permeates her home. The narrator states, “Her hospitality was something exquisite; she had the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make themselves and their houses belong entirely to a guest’s pleasure,—that charming surrender for the moment of themselves and whatever belongs to them, so that they make a part of one’s own life that can never be forgotten.”
Such disarming hospitality has little to do with the physical things in the home environment and everything to do with the disposition of the hostess. People with lavish homes and great material means may have a house that feels unwelcoming. On the other hand, someone in a small apartment may, through carefully chosen details, convey a warm sense of home and welcome to guests that obscures the paucity of their material offerings.
Hospitality is, first and foremost, about the guest and not the hostess. When parties are thrown for the adulation of the one in charge, the experience is quite different than the warm, personable reception of guests.
Orne Jewett’s narrator reflects upon seeing Mrs. Blackett in action, “Tact is after all a kind of mindreading, and my hostess held this golden gift…Besides, she had that final, that highest gift of heaven, a perfect self-forgetfulness.” Women are often encouraged to be forceful, to “take up space.” But there is charming feminine quality in being sincerely demure and, for the moment, placing the needs and comfort of other above one’s own. To discourage women entirely from such a lifestyle is to undermine the feminine gifts of many maternally inclined women.
There is also now great emphasis on recognition and reward, which run contrary to the nature of mothers and hospitality. It is not about debasing oneself and affecting false and excessive humility. Rather, it is the “self-forgetfulness” that is the soul of motherhood and hospitality. In the forgetting of the self, genuinely and for a time, we find great and lasting joy. The self that is forgotten momentarily cannot be neglected or despised, but instead cared for lovingly as mothers care for so many others around them.
The narrator wonders why such a remarkable woman as Mrs. Blackett should be banished to the outer edges of civilization. She remarks, “Sometimes, as I watched her eager, sweet old face, I wondered why she had been set to shine on this lonely island of the northern coast. It must have been to keep the balance true, and make up to all her scattered and depending neighbors for other things which they may have lacked.”
It is worth revisiting our friend Wordsworth and his sentimental little poem:
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
To make a deep and lasting impression on a few is a beautiful and simple calling in which many of us find fulfillment. While the mother may be unremarkable and forgettable to “the many,” she is irreplaceable to the few who know her well.
