SOURCE: "'In a Thicket': Glenway Wescott's Pastoral Vision," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring, 1994, pp. 187-95.

In the essay below, Baker investigates pastoral components of "In a Thicket" specifically "the implied contrast between rural innocence and urban corruption."

Like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and his other expatriate contemporaries, Glenway Wescott fled to Paris in the 1920s only to return home continuously in his writing. In Goodbye Wisconsin (1928), a collection of short stories set in his native Wisconsin, Wescott explores the themes of small-town life, flight and expatriation. The collection and its introductory essay encapsulate his ambivalence toward the Midwest: the region is isolating and morally repressive; yet, simple and idyllic, it always holds a certain allure.

In "In a Thicket,"¹ the story of a 15-year-old girl's coming of age, Wescott explores this paradox of the Midwest through his use of conventions and a narrative perspective common to pastoral...