SOURCE: “The Rhetoric of Communion in Jewett's ‘A White Heron,’” Colby Library Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 3, September, 1990, pp. 182–194.

In the following essay, Heller explores Jewett's use of tense shifts, apostrophes to objects in the story, and direct address by the narrator, techniques that were found in sentimental fiction of Jewett's time but which she largely eschewed.

Readers have observed duplicity in the rhetoric of Sarah Orne Jewett's “A White Heron” (1886). On the one hand the story realizes a number of the conventions of realistic narrative, yet on the other hand there are several violations of these conventions, especially at the level of narrative voice. The violations consist of odd shifts between past and present tense, apostrophes to objects in the story, and direct addresses by the narrator to the reader and to Sylvia, the main character. Narrative activities such as these tend to be seen as violations of the...