The Ornithologist is a total patriarchal asshole who is in search of a rare white heron, so he can shoot it, stuff it, and put it on a mantle to drunkenly tell uninterested guests the story of his heroic capture of a bird that stood little chance against a freaking rifle. He wants poor Sylvia, who hangs out in the woods a lot, like many emo girls do, to help him find this white heron. The Ornithologist is this throwback to the enlightenment era, when technology was going to save the world and help man control and dominate nature and make nature its little bitch. If this mentality sounds familiar, it's because everybody in contemporary times is tweeting these very same thoughts into their iPhones. While obviously The Ornithologist exists well after the enlightenment era, many of the ideas seem to have remained with people for a long time. And, as we see in the case of our current messianic worship of technology, these ideas have a way of cropping back up.
After a while, this lonely little girl warms up to the Ornithologist, gets a little schoolgirl crush on him, but still wonders why he kills the things that he searches for. Seems a little counterintuitive, doesn't it? If you love birds so much that you fancy yourself an ornithologist, maybe you shouldn't kill every feathered animal that you see to the point that your game-bag can be described as "lumpy." So Sylvia decides she's going to climb this enormous old pine tree, so she can see the entire forest and locate the heron's nest. The reason that this pine is so tall is because it is so old, and the reason it is so old is because an "arborist" didn't come by and chop it down. I don't know if Jewett meant for this tree to serve as an example of what happens when we don't destroy nature, but it serves that purpose all the same. Funny what conservation does!
So Sylvia stays up all night, filled with excitement by her adventurous plan. Early in the morning, before any of the lame older people wake up, she sneaks off to climb this old pine tree. It is arduous and dangerous, but she succeeds, and sees the white heron crying out for its mate. Then something happens: Sylvia realizes that the stupid ornithologist should go screw himself. She, Sylvia, is lonely like this heron, and finds this heron as a compatriot, and doesn't want it to be killed. So she climbs down, and doesn't tell the asshole ornithologist.
So there you have it, an antisocial girl finds that she relates more with a bird than with a hunter. But that isn't it! I believe that not only does The Hunter (Ornithologist? Please.) symbolize manifest destiny, but also this story is a virginity tale. Sylvia is an innocent girl of nine years, and the white heron symbolizes her purity/virginity. The thing is white after all, which is a common color to symbolize purity and chastity. So along comes this strong dominating man, and she becomes a little enamored with him. He asks her to give up the white heron, and she contemplates doing just this at first because in patriarchal society, women are taught to just do as men tell them to do. She even takes on this difficult task of climbing this tree, which could be seen as symbolizing the lengths some women will go to impress a man. But in the climb, in the difficult task, she realizes that she is strong, and has no need to give up her white heron to a man.
This virginity symbolism actually fits nicely with The Hunter's desire to dominate nature. Nature is frequently associated with the feminine. In Pagan traditions, the earth is typically a Goddess, while the ethereal God of the cosmos/heavens is given male attributes and pronouns.
In so many coming of age stories, something is sacrificed to show that the person "puts childish things away" like the biblical passage says. In A White Heron, something is preserved. This makes sense in light of Jewett herself never getting married. She never had to give anything up to a man to feel complete, she was whole on her own.
No comments:
Post a Comment