Sarah Orne Jewett’s stories have led her to be included in the “pantheon of great American writers” alongside writer Henry David Thoreau by review sources such as the San Francisco Chronicle, and her short story “The White Heron,” published in 1886 exhibits the influence she found in Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden,” published in 1854. While the character Sylvia may not resemble Thoreau by traditional standards, they share similar experiences and views despite having different stories. Specifically, the parallels between the representation of pine trees and birds by each character’s story show signs of the ecological literature movement that had been building momentum in America during the 19th century. The symbolic choices regarding the sovereignty of nature made by each writer convey the urge to protect the environment and signal a shift in Western culture toward conservation.
The Industrial Revolution left lasting effects on the environment but since its end in the 1840s, its impact on the world’s psyche has only recently started to be recognized by the general public. However, there was a group of people, including Charles Darwin, who would later become known as the first members of the scientific community concerned with “the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings,” otherwise known as “ecology”. Ecology is a word coined by (in)famous German scientist Ernst Haeckel who based many of his unique ideas on Darwin’s Origin of Species. Amongst this revolutionary group of ecologists was Henry David Thoreau, a man who also embraced Darwin’s controversial work and in turn would influence generations of ecologists like themselves. Sarah Orne Jewett’s stories about life in the wilderness of Maine, less than five hours away from Walden Pond, draw heavily upon Thoreau’s views of the world. The similarities between Jewett’s views of nature presented in The White Heron and Thoreau’s are apparent as early as when the reader is introduced to Sylvia amid her journey home with a cow one June evening just before eight o’clock. Although she has not lived there long, the reader quickly learns that Sylvia is smoothly adjusting, as she is able to make the nighttime journey home with the cow easy because “their feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not,” (669). This echoes Thoreau’s sentiment of “travel at home” that he often wrote about, saying that “knowing one's own neighborhood is travelling at home and is to be recommended.” Jewett wrote that travelling at home it is a great way to be “always learning history, geography, botany, or biography — whatever one chooses,” (Voluntary Response).
When Thoreau writes in Walden that he learned to pass “between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night,” by way of “the known relation of particular trees,” (137) he inspires millions like Jewett to get in tune with their surroundings. Thoreau is a man who considers himself to be “more the friend than the foe of the pine tree,” despite him cutting some of them down, which only made him “become better acquainted with it,” (34). The idea that a person could be friends with a tree was considered insane by many when Thoreau wrote this, but he found a way for his thoughts to resonate with those with a heart for all living things and paved the way for other writers to express their admiration of them. He did this by describing the pine wood behind his house as his best room, or as he calls it, his “withdrawing room” (114). It is here where he goes to release all his thoughts and take in the wonder that is his home. He even goes as far as to say that this is where he prefers to take “distinguished guests” because of the awe he feels toward the pine trees. By doing this, he gives readers a sense of reliance upon the wilderness and reminds them of its beauty. Thoreau also once wrote that “the poet loves the pine tree as his own shadow in the air,” (Higgins) which gives a clue about his views on the depth of the friendship between the human species and trees. He solidifies this view of intertwinement in Walden when he writes “Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me,” (106). While reading about Sylvia’s determination to make it to the top of the pine tree in search of the White Heron and how the tree “must truly have been amazed” by her “beating heart,” (677) the personification that Jewett employs by giving the tree feelings shows how Thoreau’s work would give others the confidence to provide nature the expression that it could not provide itself. Jewett does this throughout the story, writing that Sylvia carries with her the “murmur of the pine's green branches” in her ears when she remembers how the White Heron “watched the sea and the morning” with her (679). The two characters have grown to love their environments and the two authors are able to showcase this by personifying the trees and animals around them, portraying an unbreakable bond. They are both unable to betray the natural world in the way that most of their contemporaries would expect them to, especially the bird-hunter offering Sylvia a reward for the White Heron’s location and the loggers who “had the upper hand” in Thoreau’s day (Higgins).
In the late 1800s, feathers became fashionable for use in women’s clothing. Before this, Thoreau writes in Walden that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” and console themselves with “the bravery of minks and muskrats,” (7). Thoreau is aware of the superficial things that people pay large amounts of money for at the expense of the environment, and America’s obsession with the feathers of priceless birds is something he could have seen coming. Sylvia’s search for the White Heron is, after all, inspired by a wealthy ornithologist offering a hefty reward for the bird’s location so that he may kill it and make even more money. This is what drives Sylvia to climb the pine tree and “easily discover from whence the white heron flew, and mark the place, and find the hidden nest,” (675). The offer makes her think of the tree “with a new excitement” and she makes the White Heron her top priority. Sarah Orne Jewett uses the ornithologist’s offer as a metaphor for the temptation of societal norms to make us value nature as an opportunity for profit, but she uses Sylvia as a representation of a virtuous world that lives as one with nature. She does this through Sylvia’s decision that “she must keep silence,” (679) after finding the White Heron when confronted by the hunter because divulging the bird’s whereabouts will cost its life and, to Sylvia, the reward isn’t worth it. Instead of making her family rich by allowing a bird to be killed, Sylvia proves not to be a member of “the mass of men” and instead a member of the ecologists, like Thoreau.
Thoreau express his own views about the value of birds when he writes in Walden that “it might be worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird,” (102). As an early champion of nature preservation, it seems out of character for Thoreau to suggest that keeping a bird in captivity just to hear it sing is a good idea, but what this quote embodies is the pleasure that nature gives him. In his journal from 1859, Thoreau is quoted as saying “The hen-hawk and the pine are friends,” (Walden Project). His understanding of the symbiotic relationships throughout the wilderness explains the personal benefit he receives from caring for trees and being around animals. The fact that Thoreau goes on to acknowledge the domestication and exploitation of cockerels when he writes “No wonder that man added this bird to his tame stock,–to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks,” (103) exemplifies his awareness of how people like the wealthy ornithologist are always out to make a dollar off the environment. Thoreau continues to write of the cockerel that “if they could be naturalized without being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods,” (102). Here, he makes it known that he does not wish to domesticate the cockerel and demonstrates the pleasure he gets from hearing the cockerel sing. This pleasure is akin to the pleasure that Sylvia gets from observing the beautiful White Heron while preserving its independence and highlights the belief they both hold that humans and nature are destined to live harmoniously.
What ties these two works of literature together is their assertion that humans are meant to live with nature and not against it. The same benefit that Thoreau gets from preserving nature is what drives Sylvia to take the “hand” that the great world puts out to her, in the form of a wealthy hunter, and “thrust it aside for a bird’s sake” (679). A White Heron was published 32 years after Walden, in which time the Western world’s opinions of the natural world were turned upside down by the findings of Charles Darwin and other scientists. As it is noted that Walden is talked about extensively in Jewett’s biography and Thoreau was heavily influenced by Darwin, the similarities between Sylvia and Thoreau cannot be considered a coincidence, but rather a sign of a movement. The prevalence of the pine tree and birds in both works provides a basis for the characterization of both Sylvia and Thoreau as ecologists long before ecology was viewed as an important issue by the majority. Both Sylvia and Thoreau are concerned with how humans interact with the natural world and act in a way that insures its preservation, which makes the ecological influence on them difficult not to see. If Thoreau and Sylvia had known each other, it is very likely that they could be found sitting in Thoreau’s “sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house.”