Sylvia's Heron

Jewett’s “A White Heron” can be seen as a coming of age story of a girl who will choose a more uncommon path. Most girls in Sylvia’s position would have taken the money, but Sylvia inevitably chooses nature over money or “physical things” in general. She also in a way chooses not to sell herself by showing the hunter where the bird lives. The fact that all the characters in the story are female until the outsider or the “man” comes into the plot is crucial. This could bring an entirely different meaning to the story.

Women didn’t have a lot of choices back in the day (obviously). Girls were expected to marry and money was one of the most important factors in picking a husband. This could also be seen as a woman having to “sell” herself to a man. The essay “The Shape of Violence in Jewett’s “A White Heron”, by Elizabeth Ammons elaborates on this idea in relation to “A White Heron” :

“Sylvia chooses not to pass over into the world of adult female sexuality as it is defined by the culture. The nine-year-old child, a girl about to enter puberty, refuses to enter into the transaction that everyone - the hunter, her grandmother - expects her to make. "A White Heron" says that heterosexuality requires the female to offer up body itself as prey. All Sylvia has to do is offer up the body of the bird - a free, beautiful creature like herself - to the hunter and she will receive in return money, social approval, and the affection of a man. Clearly the heron in this story symbolizes the heroine, and the exchange Sylvia is expected to make at the age of nine, with her heart set throbbing by the handsome young man, is the transition from childhood to the threshold of womanhood, the wrench from little girl identification with the mother (in this case the maternal earth itself) to big girl identification with a man. Sylvia is expected to offer her freedom, her true nature, indeed life itself to a predator, who will pierce, stuff, and then own and admire the beautiful corpse.” (Ammon p.5)


If the Heron in the story represented Sylvia then this girl was simply making her first responsible choice not only about nature, but about herself. She wasn’t going to sell herself out for the approval or acceptance of the stranger. Sylvia made a choice not to be bought.

Elizabeth Ammon’s essay on Jewett’s “A White Heron” also elaborates on the whole fairytale aspect of the story. Ammon says, “Jewett sets the stage perfectly for the rescuing prince to appear. And he does.” The “rescuing prince” or the hunter in this case appears, but the ending is not that of a usual fairytale. Sylvia doesn’t get rescued, but quite oppositely tells the man she doesn’t need to be rescued. She doesn’t want his money and she doesn’t want to give away her bird or herself no matter the cost.

There however, is a lot more in Elizabeth Ammon’s essay that I did not quote or even mention. Ammon argues, “that "A White Heron" is a story about resistance to heterosexuality; that the form Jewett adopts to express her idea is, quite appropriately, the fairy tale; and that despite her protests to the contrary Jewett shows in this fiction her ability to create conventional "plot" - that is, to use inherited masculine narrative shape - when she needs to.” The link to this essay is posted below if anyone is interested.

http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2615&context=cq

The Artist's Van

“Fenton’s pictures from the Crimea thus operate under technological and ideological constraints. The War Office forbade the photography of dead bodies, and in order for Agnew (and Fenton) to make a commercial success out of the sale of the photographs, the images produced had to be appealing. Although the wet collodion process on glass was a huge improvement over earlier technologies, it still required exposures of  to  seconds depending on the lighting. The glass plates used for negatives had to be coated with the collodion and used almost immediately before it dried and, in the extreme heat of the Crimean summer, this posed an especial problem.” (Houston)

There is speculation as to why Fenton stayed clear of painting a negative picture of the war. It could have been because the environmental conditions and the photographic techniques didn’t work well together or it could have been for political reasons. The argument of Fenton’s photography being somewhat “mild” could be made either way. Fenton had the support of the Royal family and the British government backing him and they most likely did influence his photography. He was forbidden to photograph dead bodies by the War Office and that seems to limit any photos to be taken on the battlefield. So what was Fenton really supposed to do? He wasn’t allowed to take pictures of dead guys and the people who sent him there didn’t want photos that would paint the war in a “negative” light. I believe Fenton was trying to do the best job he could under the conditions and restrictions that pressed down upon him. Even if he had tried to do “live” action photography of soldiers in battle the movement would have been a picture of blurs against a landscape.

I chose Roger Fenton’s photo of The artist's van because it depicts the conditions of his photography. He converted a wine merchant’s van into a mobile dark room. The heat of the Crimean summer made it difficult to take pictures. There wasn’t an extreme amount of time to take pictures wherever or whenever he wanted because of the photography process. I believe that this had a greater influence on his photos more than anything else.

The Mermaid and Her Jeans

Levi’s ad campaign: A Provocation, A Challenge, and An Invitation. I suppose one could say Whitman was provoked into accepting an invitation for a challenge when he wrote Leaves of Grass, but other than that I don’t really see the connection to Levi’s jeans. I own a few pairs of Levi’s and it wasn’t because they exploited Whitman’s work. I think Levi’s campaign is a little distorted to say the least. Whitman may have written Leaves of Grass as an answer to Emerson’s The Poet, but it wasn’t an advertisement for poetry. Whitman did not spend a huge amount of his life writing poems because he loved Levi’s.
I’m not saying I didn’t like the advertisements. I thought they were kind of cool. They were inspiring, but in a “I want to run through a field and light off fireworks” kind of way not in a “I need Levi’s jeans” kind of way. It doesn’t really bother me that they used Whitman. I think a lot of people who knew nothing about him previously will unknowingly know something about him after seeing the ad.
As for advertisers playing the cultural roles that poets played in earlier eras…… unh? What? Who said this? Really? Am I crazy? Is there a hidden vault somewhere containing poems written by America’s greatest poets that are all about buying fashionable merchandise? Although there are few left in the world today, there ARE still people who read actual books instead of magazines, poems instead of tabloids, and don’t find cable television a necessity for everyday life.
However, I am in no way saying that advertisers can’t be poetic. Take the mermaid picture for example. A legless mermaid with a pair of jeans… how tragic.