Resistance to Gender Construction in Sarah Orne Jewett’s Novel

Sarah Orne Jewett, an American novelist and short stories writer, was born in South Berwick, Maine on September 3, 1849, to Dr. Theodore Harmon Jewett, a country doctor, and Caroline Frances Jewett. Living in well established family, as a woman, she had privilege to continue her study at Miss Olive Rayne's school and then at Berwick Academy, graduated in 1865. Accompanying her father as a country doctor made her could expand her knowledge about many regions and its people. Thus she got inspiration for her writing. Jewett published her first important story in the Atlantic Monthly when she was 19, and her reputation grew throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Many of her writing are reflecting her father and her early ambitions for a medical career. Willa Cather  also described Jewett as a significant influence on her development as a writer, and "feminist critics have since championed her writing for its rich account of women's lives and voices." (http://www.poemhunter.com/sarah-orne-jewett/biography/)

Jewett was heavily influenced by another American female writer, Harriet Beecher Stowe, writer of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Life Among the Lowly that were the most popular American book of the 19th century. It was told that Jewett was inspired to write the novella after being disappointed by Stowe's portrayal of Maine in The Pearl of Orr's Island. Some years later, Jewett became inspiration for Willa Cather, whose 1913 novel, O Pioneers!, was dedicated to Jewett.

Jewett chose not to marry, and earned money for living by writing. This decision not to be a wife and taking care of household for women had become more possible in the social climate of nineteenth-century America.Jewett also adapted her life experiences in her writing. Like other nineteenth-century American writers, Jewett employs this representation of medical woman to expand the possible narratives of woman’s fiction and woman’s lives. Through the characters in her novel, she also confronts unstable construction of nature and gender and dismantles associated culture dualisms. (Jurecic, 1994)

In nineteenth century, woman’s position in America was far away from gender equality with man. At that time, they were denied to vote, barred from professional schools and most higher education, forbidden to speak in public and even attend public conventions, and unable to own property. (VanSpanckeren, 1994). Women were expected to remain subservient as a wife. Their occupational choices were also extremely limited. Women in that era generally had to take care of the household, children and be obedient with their husband or father.

Portrait of American woman also could be seen in The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Patmore in The Angel in the House shows how woman have to be obedient to man figure, her husband. Patmore also adduces many details to stress the almost pathetic ordinariness of her life: she pick violets, loses her gloves, feeds her birds, waters her rose plot, and journeys to London on a train with her father the Dean, carrying in her lap a volume of Petrarch borrowed from her lover but entirely ignorant that the book is, as he tells us,”worth its weight in gold” (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979). Woman placed as the party that did not have authority to do other things except taking care of household. Woman had to make sure that the house is neat and the members of the family are all happy served by her. If woman could have a trip, it was not as her independent trip but rather accompany male figures (her father or husband). In short, like Goethe’s Makarie, Honoria has no story except a sort of antistory of selfness innocence based on the notion that “Man must be pleased; but him to please/ Is woman’s pleasure (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979). It clarifies that woman primary duty is to please man. Woman’s pleasure would not be in any sphere but pleasing man. Women are defined as wholly passive that they even do not know what actually they want because they are always dictated by man. The arts of pleasing men, in other words, are not only angelic characteristic; in more worldly terms, they are proper acts a lady (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979). It made not only man that wants woman as Angel in the House, but rather woman, too. Woman was enticed to be an Angel in the House also because it portrayed as perfect figure; a lady.

The delineation of woman also could be seen in Cixous’ Castration or Decapitation?. Woman described as the one who was lack of opportunity to be greater than man because woman is small, inferior, low, and even History. Culture made as it is woman’s nature to be inferior to man. With the opposition between Man and Woman, it is clear that they have different competence. Like what Cixous argues that there is difference between activity and passivity. Of course the activity is for man. They have more authority than woman. There are many things than man can do otherwise woman cannot. The differences based on gender clearly shown here. While man is obviously the active, upright, the productive . . . and besides, it’s how it happened in History. (Cixous, 1981). It shows that History support the delineation that man is the active one, the productive that hold important role in many cases. Meanwhile, woman is delineated as the one who cannot do anything without man. Most interesting! It’s all there, a woman cannot, is unable, hasn’t the power. Not to mention “speaking”: it’s exactly this that she’s forever deprived of. (Cixous, 1981). With the limitation that woman cannot speak, it shows hat that there is distinction of language based on gender.  These distinction and definitions contribute to the construction of gender-based identities because it creates the opposition between man and woman. With the explanation about the passiveness of woman through act and language, it strengthens man’s position.

In the nineteenth century, as I explained before that woman endured many inequalities. They were denied to vote, barred from professional schools and most higher education, forbidden to speak in public and even attend public conventions, and unable to own property. (VanSpanckeren, 1994). Meanwhile, many women did not just surrender in such this destiny. Many of them bravely speak up through letters, personal friendship, formal meetings, woman’s newspaper, and books. They struggled for furthered social change. Woman writers began to lift up the issue of men and woman are created equal and includes a resolution to give woman the right to vote. The struggle of woman writer gave the portrait that woman started to shift the position of being passive into more active. They tried to shift the idea that woman’s faith was taking care of household.

In Jewett’s writings, she showed the resistance to gender construction through her character in the novel. She did not bring the idea of The Angel in the House, but rather in the contrary. Marriage was not the focus of woman character in Jewett’s novel. The issue of inequality between man and woman began to be lift up through novel. Resistance to gender construction started to speak loudly through the novel. As in the character in Jewett’s novel, she presented woman character refused to end up her life marry and take care of household. She insisted to reach vocation as high as man although education was not proper thing for woman in that period. The resistance also showed through the character’s point of view that she could be anything she want without be glued in certain norms. Jewett’s medical woman, and ever her male physicians, operate such a third type. They denaturalize  the difference between men and women, and they also suggest that the categories male and female not unified within themselves, that there is no gendered nature (Jurecic, 1994). The passage clarifies that woman has tight boundaries in every aspect of her life, include the vocation. Medical woman even classified as third type that is outside the normal norms. Woman placed as a party that had to accept her destiny to be passive in her whole life. Being active is not her right. Woman character in Jewett’s novel also portrayed as anxious woman to choose her life path. She gained many disagreement because she refused to follow the common path for woman. Woman’s vocation assumed includes of being obedient to male authority and domestic service and reproduction within marriage, or if one does not marry, in domestic service to the family. In the contrary, the character in Jewett’s novel had such a belief that woman also have individual callings, just as man. It began to appear that through the novel, woman could speak for her disagreement of patriarchal.


Works Cited
Cixous, H. (1981). Castration or Decapitation?.

Gilbert,Sandra and Susan Gubar. (1979). The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer
and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Jurecic, Ann.(1994).Gender and the Healing Arts in the Writings of Sarah Orne Jewett.In Ann Jurecic, The Genus Medical Woman: Representation of Female Doctors and Nurses in America Fiction from the Civil War into the Twentieth century.

VanSpanckeren, K. (1994). American LIterature-Revised Edition. USA: United States Departement of State.

(n.d.). Retrieved January 3, 2015, from PoemHunter.com:
http://www.poemhunter.com/sarah-orne-jewett/biography/