A White Heron Themes

At the climax of “A White Heron,” the story’s protagonist, Sylvia, must choose whether to help the hunter find and kill a beautiful and rare white heron, or whether to keep the heron safe by not revealing the location of its nest. This choice can be seen as an allegory for the conflict between nature and industrialization. By 1886, when Sarah Orne Jewett wrote the story, both the industrial revolution’s economic promise and…

Just as Sylvia must choose between nature and industrialization, she must choose between conservation and greed. Greed threatens the nature of the countryside (through industrialization, as well as through the hunter striving to possess the white heron as a trophy), but it also promises Sylvia material reward (in the form of the hunter’s bribe) for helping in this destruction. After witnessing the heron from the top of the old pine tree, Sylvia decides to reject…

Sylvia’s existence in the country is quite solitary, as her only companions are her grandmother Mrs. Tilley and their cow Mistress Moolly. This solitude leads Sylvia to sometimes long for human companionship, but mostly she seems content to be alone with nature. In fact, Sylvia’s positive relationship to solitude suggests that solitude is essential to coming of age, because it allows the freedom to forge one’s own identity and it breeds independence and…