Deephaven by Sarah Orne Jewett (1877)

I think I first read something by Sarah Orne Jewett in college - 20 years ago or so - but what that something was I can't remember. I have to admit, I was actually sort of hesitant to read this book; for some reason, it seemed intimidating (related, perhaps, to that long ago college experience). What a pleasant surprise I had - Deephaven was delightful. I checked out a Library of America version of this very short novel that also included many others of Sarah Orne Jewett's works, which I'm definitely going to return to sometime in the future. The story, about two twentysomething Boston girls spending the summer in a small Maine town, is told from Helen's point of view. I thought it was a bit odd that two unmarried girls in 1877 would spend the summer unchaperoned in Maine, but as I read more about Sarah Orne Jewett's personal life, I started filling in more of the blanks. Sarah Orne Jewett was a lesbian; she spent 30 years in a "Boston marriage" with another (older) woman. And while "scholars" may speculate on the exact nature of this relationship, I want to roll my eyes and say "Come on." Of course the relationship was sexual as well; it's silly (and quite frankly sexist) to think it wasn't. But whatever; there are always going to be some scholars that go out of their way to prove these old authors weren't gay. It sounds like Sarah wasn't even all that closeted about their marriage.

So if you paint that veneer over this story, the fact that two women spend the summer alone together in Maine makes more sense - they were in love. Here is this beautiful scene:

"When we came down from the lighthouse and it grew late, we would beg for an hour or two longer on the water, and row away in the twilight far out from land, where, with our faces turned from the Light, it seemed as if we were alone, and the sea shoreless; and as the darkness closed round us softly, we watched the stars come out, and were always glad to see Kate's star and my star, which we had chosen when we were children. I used long ago to be sure of one thing,—that, however far away heaven might be, it could not be out of sight of the stars. Sometimes in the evening we waited out at sea for the moonrise, and then we would take the oars again and go slowly in, once in a while singing or talking, but oftenest silent."

Okay, I think this is heartbreakingly romantic - they chose stars together. They sit and talk and sing. If that isn't something lovers do, I don't know what is. They also spend the novel doing things respectable females (at least in other Victorian books) don't do - fish, tramp through the woods in old clothes, visit and talk with various old men along the seafront. They are far from the society that knows them (and condemns them, lets not forget, in ways both subtle and specific). In Deephaven, they can be themselves, and they can be a couple.

Exceptionally well written, vivid lovely descriptions, regionally romantic - Jewett made me want to visit Maine -- a Maine that was even then vanishing (the whole point of this set of related stories). Nostalgic, and more than a little sad.

The most beautiful story was "Miss Chauncey" about the crazy woman whose house is falling around her.


Something I wanted to note is that this book was written at approximately the same time as Mark Twain's The Gilded Age.  I remember Twain and Warner's bet with their wives about writing a novel, and the reason they wanted to do so  - that so much of what was being published at that particular time was feminine in nature.  Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe were two examples; Sarah Orne Jewett was another. This book might be lovely, but it's definitely from a more feminine point of view, and it's night and day away different from The Gilded Age in everything except that core issue of change.  Twain and Warner were capturing a change in society, in which old things were being replaced by something new; I think Jewett even more obviously was writing about this as well.


Another thing I liked - Willa Cather was inspired by Sarah Orne Jewett.