Willa & Sarah

Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather lived very different in their early lives. Cather was from Nebraska, grew up in a farm and later moved into a small town, and Jewett lived in Maine-daughter to a doctor- and attended school until her arthritis proved to be too much of an obstacle. As treatment for her arthritis, Jewett had to take several long walks, which allowed her to grow an appreciation for nature and her surroundings in NE America. Cather attended college thanks to her parent’s efforts (they took out a loan) and moved to New York, where she met Jewett among other writers. Jewett, being a colorist, urged Cather to stop relying on what she had learned in her academic readings and focus more on her own experiences of her earlier years, in Nebraska. It is because of this encounter, because of this friendship that we are able to see and feel the experiences of the characters in the story “O Pioneers!”
There are many elements of Jewett’s story “A White Heron” in Cather’s “O Pioneers!” One that is most noticeable from the beginning of the story is the fact that each part is numbered, not just a chunk of text. Also, "A White Heron" is based on the story of Sylvia, an eight year old who moves to her grandmother's farm from a manufacturing town. This is a similarity with Cather's story in that the immigrants that move to The Divide were also people from towns, who knew nothing about the land- as Cather quotes: "Their neighbors, certainly, knew even less about farming than he did...They had been handwerkers at home; tailors, locksmiths, joiners, cigarmakers, etc." (Pt. 1, Ch.1 p.27)
Jewett and Cather's settings are very different, but described in detail and prove that the authors had a vast knowledge and experience with these lands. For example, Jewett writes "Half a mile from home, at the farther edge of the woods, where the land was highest, a great pine-tree stood, the last of its generation. Half a mile from home, at the farther edge of the woods, where the land was highest, a great pine-tree stood, the last of its generation. Whether it was left for a boundary mark, or for what reason, no one could say; the woodchoppers who had felled its mates were dead and gone long ago, and a whole forest of sturdy trees, pines and oaks and maples, had grown again., no one could say; the woodchoppers who had felled its mates were dead and gone long ago, and a whole forest of sturdy trees, pines and oaks and maples, had grown again." This would have taken a lot of imagination, to achieve such imagery with accuracy, as does Cather in O Pioneers! in the opening of Part 3, where she describes the fields in wintertime with a beautiful accuracy, the fields all one color now, the animals, the trees and the frozen ground.
Something else, yet marks an even greater similarity, that is the relationship the main characters, Sylvia and Alexandra, develop with the land. Jewett's eight year old sylvia, who climbs the oak tree and witnesses the way the Heron lived, "look, look! a white spot of him like a single floating feather comes up from the dead hemlock and grows larger, and rises, and comes close at last, and goes by the landmark pine with steady sweep of wing and outstretched slender neck and crested head. And wait! wait! do not move a foot or a finger, little girl, do not send an arrow of light and consciousness from your two eager eyes, for the heron has perched on a pine bough not far beyond yours, and cries back to his mate on the nest and plumes his feathers for the new day!
The child gives a long sigh a minute later when a company of shouting cat-birds comes also to the tree, and vexed by their fluttering and lawlessness the solemn heron goes away. She knows his secret now..." and Cather's Alexandra, who "felt as if her heart were on hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring", there is a connection Alexandra has with nature throughout the book- and that marks the difference, Sylvia felt this connection with the Heron the second she had an alone moment.
Willa Cather was not inclined to write about her homeland, to celebrate this period in American History, if it would not have been for this encounter with Sarah Orne Jewett. These two writers show us two different landscapes, in a way we had not seen before. They also allow us to see the connection we, as humans, have had with nature- and remain to have.