A White Heron

“A White Heron” is the most popular short story by American author Sarah Orne Jewett. A work of American regionalism and romanticism, the tale emphasizes the setting, the human-animal connection, a celebration of nature, and individual experience. Jewett is a famous figure in literary regionalism, and her work often explores themes of the natural world. In “A White Heron,” Jewett uses literary techniques such as personification to make the environment and animals come alive as secondary characters.

This study guide refers to the 1994 Library of America edition: Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels & Stories.

Originally published in 1886, “A White Heron” focuses on nine-year-old Sylvia, who lives with her grandmother in the coastal woods of Maine, and her transformative experience deciding whether to reveal the location of a rare white heron to an ornithologist. Sylvia subverts the expectation of giving in to greed and the wishes of an older male character in favor of protecting nature’s purity and her own happiness.

The story opens with a description of the setting, an expansive forest in Maine and “a bright sunset [that] still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees” (669).