Marilyn E. Mobley (Essay Date March 1986)

SOURCE: Mobley, Marilyn E. "Rituals of Flight and Return: The Ironic Journeys of Sarah Orne Jewett's Female Characters." Colby Library Quarterly 21, no. 1 (March 1986): 36-42.

In the following essay, Mobley examines Jewett's use of flight imagery to describe her female characters, claiming that this imagery demonstrates her admiration for "self-reliant women."

In light of Sarah Orne Jewett's expressed affection for the rural villages of Maine, it might seem inconsistent that she so often uses flight imagery to describe the real and imaginative journeys of her female characters. Though seemingly contradictory, this characteristic imagery belies an ambivalence toward her native region,¹ and demonstrates an unflinching admiration for its self-reliant women. Challenging the notion that range is masculine and that confinement is feminine,² Jewett portrays women who continually contemplate and/or embark on journeys outside the confines of their rural domestic communities. While...