emma_in_dream: (kate bunce)
[personal profile] emma_in_dream
This collection contains the novella length ‘Deep Haven’ and some short stories.


I can see why Orne Jewett was so popular. I will go out on a limb and say that she reminds me of LM Montgomery. She has the same love of a particular region, the same beautiful descriptions of scenery.


‘Deep Haven’ is about two young women who come to a small backwater town. They enjoy rambling around and they meet the local characters. Stories, both comic and tragic, are told to them. This could be the plot of *Anne of the Island* or *Anne of Windy Willows*.


The difference – and perhaps this is the reason that Orne Jewett is read less than Montgomery – is that the narrator of ‘Deep Haven’ is not nearly so loveable as Anne. Anne enjoys meeting all her neighbours, she rejoices in them and loves being tied to a particular place. The narrator is much more distant, amused by but not tied to her neighbours.


There’s an element of disdain as she observes but does not participate in life. For instance, there’s a chapter describing a struggling family with poor children. When they make a return visit the parents have both died and the children are about to be split up and sent to different homes. As I read I honestly thought the next chapter was going to be the narrator intervening to bring them home. Or, failing that, giving them the twenty dollar bill she had mentioned was in her pocket. But no… she observes, she paints a wistful picture of the old homestead left unoccupied, the family circle broken up, but she doesn’t intervene. This is not what Anne would do!


I found the short stories equally frustrating. They were beautifully written and had gorgeous descriptions of the scenery. But they were oddly about enforcing gender compliance. One was about a man who went mad and thought he was his own sister and began wearing her clothes and going to missionary society meetings to sew. He was much to be pitied. Another was about a married couple where the woman took on running the factory and the man kept house until he became frustrated at being described as a man who kept house (even though he was good at it) and insisted that they instead go on holidays.


There are moments when I find Montgomery equally frustrating – That bit in *A Tangled Web* where the naked statue is sprayed bronze because a naked bronze lady is fine in the home but a naked white lady is not. But on the whole Montgomery entrances.


Orne Jewett is good but not entrancing.
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