In the following excerpt, Graham discusses the representations of time in Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs.

Feminist theory has recently offered new perspectives on Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs. Much of this recent scholarship is based on the work of Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan, who argue that females and males, because of socially constructed experiences, may espouse different values and speak in different voices. Briefly stated, the feminine perspective is cyclical, inductive, and communal; the masculine perspective linear, deductive, and hierarchical. Elizabeth Ammons argues that the narrative structure of The Country of the Pointed Firs is structured in opposition to masculine narrative: "Instead of being linear, it [The Country of the Pointed Firs] is nuclear: the narrative moves out from one base to a given point and back again, and so forth, like arteries on a spider's web." Josephine Donovan...