Dream House Part II: Islands

"'T was the same little house her father had built him when he was a bachelor, with one livin'-room, and a little mite of a bedroom out of it where she slept, but 't was neat as a ship's cabin.  There was some old chairs, an' a seat made of a long box that might have held boat tackle an' things to lock up in his fishin' days, and a good enough stove so anybody could cook and keep warm in cold weather....Joanna had done one thing very pretty.  There was a little piece o'swamp on the island where good rushes grew plenty, and she'd gathered 'em, and braided some beautiful mats for the floor and a thick cushion for the long bunk.  She'd showed a good deal of invention; you see there was a nice chance to pick up pieces o'wood and boards that drove ashore, and she'd made good use o'what she found.  There was n't no clock, but she had a few dishes on a shelf, and flowers set about in shells fixed to the walls...."

---Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896)

In this section of Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) we hear the painful story of Joanna Todd, the cousin by marriage of main character Almira Todd.  Jilted by her fiance, Joanna is so distraught over her fate that she determines that she can no longer reside within the community.  Relocating to "Shell Heap Island," she takes up residence in her father's bachelor house, were she lives as a hermit until her death.  As she explains, her extreme bitterness and complete loss of "hope" not only make her "want to be alone" but make her unfit for social life.  Joanna's makeshift efforts at domesticating her home, as recorded above, evidence her innovation, but also the loss of the true creative power which is inextricably tied to hope--the idea that the future will be better than the past.  Joanna understands such hope as a prerequisite for community life.   

Joanna's island home is a dream home not because it represents something utopian, but because it represents something universal.  When the narrator of the story makes a pilgrimage to Shell-Heap Island, decades after Joanna's death, only a foundation of stones from her home and a few flowers from the garden remain.  Yet as her commentary suggests, this kind of island home resides in all of us in the more figurative sense: "In the life of life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong."  Our fellows of the cell....love that, Jewett. 

Don't Chase Boys

 Or so suggests William Dean Howells in this quote taken from his novel of 1882, A Modern Instance. In this scene, a mother and father contemplate their daughter's engagement to a slick journalist.  We might think of their advice as the nineteenth century rendition of the more familiar parental refrain.   Sound advice?  Or perhaps not?  Twenty-first century parenting might sound a bit different...

"He's smart enough, "said Mrs. Gaylord, as before.

"M-yes, most too smart," replied her husband, a little more quickly than before. "He's smart enough even if she wasn't, to see from the start that she was crazy to have him, and that isn't the best way to begin life for a married couple, if  I'm a judge."

"It would killed her if she hadn't got him.  I could see 't was wearin' on her every day, more and more.  She used to fairly jump, every knock she'd hear at the door; and I know sometimes, when she was afraid he wasn't coming, she used to go out, in hopes't she sh'd meet him; I don't suppose she allowed to herself that she did it for that--Marcia's proud."

"M-yes," said the Squire, "she's proud.  And when a proud girl makes a fool of herself about a fellow, it's a matter of life and death with her.  She can't help herself.  She lets go everything."

---William Dean Howells, A Modern Instance  (1882)