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The depictio­n of the stranger - Sarah Orne Jewett: `The Foreigne­r`

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2,7 , 2013, MLA, OPAC, JSTOR

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The depiction of the stranger
in Sarah Orne Jewett - The Foreigner

Inhalt

1 Introduction3

2 Narrative Perspective4

3 The depiction of the stranger Mrs. Tolland4

3.1 Behavior and Attitude of Mrs. Tolland8

3.2 Rejection: Dunnet Landing society11

3.3 Approaches: Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Todd14

4 Conclusion17

5 Bibliography19


1 Introduction

Warren Berthoff acknowledged “The Foreigner” as one of the mislaid treasures of American writing. The story remained unnoticed in the files of the Atlantic Monthly until David Bonnell Green found and rescued it from oblivion and included it in The World of Dunnet Landing: A Sarah Orne Jewett Collection (Piacentino 92).

It tells the story of a stranger among folks in a foreign country. I refer to Georg Simmel’s “The Stranger” to interpret the concept strangeness. Simmel’s stranger is not the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but the person who comes today and stays tomorrow. So he is the potential wanderer who has not moved on, has not overcome the freedom of coming and going.

Everywhere, throughout history of economics the stranger appears as the trader. Trade is therefore the sphere indicated for the stranger, because it can absorb more people than primary production.  A trader is required for products that are made outside the group. If the trader can live by intermediate trade, he might settle down in the place of his activity, instead of leaving it again.

The stranger is far enough away so that he is unknown, but also close enough that it is possible to get to know him. In a society there must be a stranger, because if everyone is known, there is no person that is able to bring something new to everybody. Ideally the stranger enriches a society by the qualities he imports into it. The stranger in the story didn’t come to Dunnet Landing as a trader and stayed, rather she was brought to Dunnet Landing from traders, who shipped products to and fro Jamaica.

Yet, she stayed, and she brought qualities. But those neither were they valued, nor was she integrated into society.

“The Foreigner” is no light-entertaining story you read on a cosy Sunday afternoon and right away forget about it. It’s an emotional story that makes one reflect on the own life: Everyone has met strangers or even has been a stranger, felt lonely and desolate, was rejected by a person or rejected someone etc., at some points in his life.

On the other hand keep thinking about the reasons that caused the depressing isolation of the stranger. In the following I want to find out why the integration of the stranger, Mrs. Tolland, into the Dunnet Landing community failed and if her behavior and attitude actually were the point of matter.

2 Narrative Perspective


The story is narrated from Mrs. Todd’s perspective, and Mrs. Todd’s story is then represented by the houseguest and narrator under the title The Foreigner (Davis 91). At no point does the narrator move into the story Mrs. Todd tells. She allows her at every point to tell her own story (Pryse 246).

Mrs. Todd stumbles about with the information she is attempting to present: She’s repeating herself and giving mistaken information – her attitude suggests one troubled by what is about to occur (Anderson 391). Additionally Mrs. Todd tries to keep the event indefinite, judging it was “thirty, or maybe forty, year ago” (Jewett 154). She says she isn’t one who keeps much account of time, which is an odd statement from a woman who serves as a prime historian of Dunnet Landing and its environs (Anderson 391).

Mrs. Todd makes the impression to be emotionally tied to the story.

3 The depiction of the stranger Mrs. Tolland


„This makes me think o‘ the night Mis‘ Cap’n Tolland died“ (Jewett 153).  The first mentioning of Mrs. Tolland already shows distance, because she is referred to with the name of her husband. Later on she is mostly called Mrs. Tolland. Mrs. Tolland’s maiden name remains unknown.

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Mrs. Todd has either never known it or forgotten. “I never knew her maiden name; if I ever heard it, I’ve gone an’ forgot; ‘twould mean nothing to me” (Jewett 154). So I follow, that she has never asked her about it, and neither they talked about other private matters. We are told, that Mrs. Todd only once asked her about her “folks” (Jewett 160).  But the most information we get about Mrs.

Tolland’s life before she came to Dunnet Landing, is what she told the captains on Jamaica. Mrs. Todd maybe got the information directly from her father, Jonathan Bowden, “Father said…” (Jewett 156) or from her mother as she once mentions: “Father told mother,” and retells the story of Mrs. Cap’n Tolland to her guest in a stormy night. The narrative’s subject is situated in the position of the raging wind, symbolizing a distressed creature trying to get in (Davis 91).

The reader gets the impression that Mrs. Todd actually not really knew Mrs. Tolland, although she was the one Mrs. Tolland had the most contact with, apart from Captain Tolland. Mrs. Todd begins the story with “She was a foreigner, an‘ he met with her out in the Island o’ Jamaica” (Jewett 154).  Assumedly, Mrs.

Todd means that Mrs. Tolland was a foreigner in Maine, but actually she was a foreigner in Jamaica too. She was French born and her husband was “a Portugee, or somethin.” The added “or somethin” (Jewett 154) increases the assumption, that Mrs. Todd only knows the details second-hand and that they rarely talked about them. Mrs. Tollan and her husband came to Kingston from the Windward Islands – some of them politically belong to France – and wanted to get on a steamer to France. “She came here from the French islands” (Jewett 150). Obviously they couldn’t find a place to feel home - neither on the Windward Islands or where they were before, nor on Jamaica.

So Mrs. Tolland wanted to move back to the country where she was born in, assumedly, to finally settle down. Her plans were destroyed when her husband, children and all of her friends died of yellow fever and she happened to be there alone and without money – it was stolen off her husband by a negro. She couldn’t afford to get on the steamer to France anymore and “fell at last to playin’ an singin’ for hire, and for what money they’d throw to her round them harbor houses” (Jewett 155).  The mentioning of the tip money in the harbor houses implies that her salary for the singing wasn’t so high and she really needed additional payment, but still couldn’t afford to pay the passage.

So she ended up in Jamaica, not only as a foreigner, but as a stranger. So the following statement is ambiguous: “but she come a foreigner and she went a foreigner, and never was anything but a stranger among our folks“ (Jewett 158). Already in Jamaica she as the foreigner and wanderer has not overcome the freedom of coming and going. And now in Dunnet Landing, she’s the person who came today and stays tomorrow.

She is now fixed within a particular spatial group, the Dunnet Landing community (Simmel 1). Mrs. Todd always thought that “they’d done better, and more reasonable, to give her some money to pay her passage home to France, or wherever she may have wanted to go” (Jewett 155).  But later on, the wish is undercut by Mrs. Todd herself, when she makes it clear that the foreigner had no home, all her family were dead and she hadn’t been to France since she was six (Jewett 160).

Todd’s knowledge about herbs and recipes, that influences her life long after the foreigner dies. While linguistic alterity functions to ‘ethnizice’ the foreigner, the moments of comprehension work almost exclusively to verify that the stranger is not of this world (Davis 92).

Mrs. Tolland character is repeatedly described with childishness. Her dance in the vestry was “just as light and pleasant as a child” (Jewett 157). Her speech was no better than that of a child and Mrs. Todd points out that “you often felt as if you was dealin’ with a child’s mind (Jewett 159). And on Mrs.

Tolland’s private celebration Mrs. Todd indicates that she “behaved very pretty and girlish”. On the wharf Mrs. Tolland “took on dreadful at partin” (Jewett 158), she kind of made a scene and acted like a small girl who wouldn’t let go of her father (Jewett 160). By contrast, in Dunnet Landing seem to live only conservative, provincial and serious-minded adults, many demonstrate little tender-hearted understanding or patient tolerance of uninhibited display of emotional feeling (Piacentino 96-97).

On page 159 Mrs. Todd states: “she wore a fixed smile that wa’n’t a smile; there wa’n’t no light behind it, same’s a lamp can’t shine if it ain’t lit.” and that “you couldn’t get to no affectionateness with her.” It appears, Mrs. Tolland wears a mask to hide her real feelings and emotions.

At this point Mrs. Todd is unable to encode the countenance of Mrs. Tolland and so Mrs. Tolland seems so “strange-looking” to her after a while (Jewett 159). “Father said there wa’nt a mite o’ harm in her, but somehow or other a sight o’ prejudice arose; it may have been caused by the remarks of Eliza an’ her feelin’s tow’ds her brother” (Jewlett 156). The unity of nearness and remoteness in the relationship to the stranger is organized by saying that distance means that she, who is close, is far; and strangeness means, that she; who is far, is actually near (Simmel 1).

Mrs. Todd conveys that she didn’t really trust Mrs. Tolland, sth. about her person or behaviour made Mrs. Todd feel uncomfortable.

On the day Mrs. Tolland gets the message of her husband’s death, she has a party all alone in her house. She puts garlands on the walls, wears a wreath of flowers on her hair and a gold chain around her neck. She says, it was her fete day and in the beginning she is pleased and happy about the visitors.

In fact she could have invited Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Blackett, or did she enjoy her lonliness after all? Only within the privacy of her own house, and when alone there she removes her made countenance. Almira Todd and Captain Bowden meet her on one such occasion and as Mrs. Todd observes (Piacentino 95), “that set look gone out of her face” (Jewett 161). In this instance, as Mis’ Tolland celebrates her feast day, she asserts her true self, exhibiting natural vitality she has long repressed from public view (Piacentino 95).

Todd had no one to live for anymore. Her position in Dunnet Landing is determinded, by the fact that she has not belonged to it from the beginning (Simmel 1). “Not the house and nor Dunnet Landing could give her a sense of home, so she died of a broken heart and loneliness just few months after the announcement of his death. She had nowhere to go, even her home country France was strange to her.

All her relatives were dead and she hadn’t been there since she was about six. There was no other way out; no chance to ever feel home again in her life; her last resort was dying. On her death bed her mother appeared and welcomed her to the sky. The ending of the story suggests that she was finally home when she entered the land of the dead with her mother and left the land of the living: “I felt they’d gone away together” (Jewett 167).The foreigner has finally found a home, a place she belongs.

It is only when she leaves to the other world, that the foreigner and the town she so disquiets can find peace (Schrag 95).


3.1 Behavior and Attitude of Mrs. Tolland


To be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation. It is a specific form of interaction, because the stranger who is an element of the group, is outside of it and confronts it. The stranger imports qualities into it, which do not stem from the group itself (Simmel 1).In the following, I want to show how the imported qualities and behavior of Mrs. Tolland challenged Dunnet Landing people.

Mrs. Tolland went to the meetin’ house vestry with Mrs. Blackett. Mrs Tolland “appeared very pretty until they started to have some singin’ to the melodeon”. What happened then, can be seen as rude behavior from the perspective of Mari’ Harris and the other singing girl. They were embarrassed by Mrs. Tolland in front of the social circle. Mrs. Tolland



On the one hand she acted natural, honest and assumedly just wanted to be of help, but on the other hand her behavior was disrespectful and without regard of the singer’s feelings. She didn’t behave very empathically. Mrs. Todd also didn’t appreciate the behavior back then, as she states “poor creatur’, it all seems so different to me now”.

The people were stunned by the event and remained speechless: “An’ then there fell a dead calm, an’ we was all settin’ round prim as dishes”. Mrs. Tolland’s dancing in the vestry actually kind of saved the situation: “There wa’n’t one of ‘em but enjoyed it; she just tried to do her part, an’ some urged her on” (Jewett 157).  People forgave her the misbehavior from before, but Mari’ Harris didn’t, so “next day there was an awful scandal goin’ in the parish”.

The text suggests, that Mrs. Tolland didn’t reflect her behavior or apologized for it to Mari’ Harris, because it only says, that Mari’ Harris reproached Mrs. Blackett. And Mrs. Todd kind of apologized for Mrs Tolland, that “Mis’ Tolland didn’t intend no impropriety”  Jewett 157). Mrs. Tolland’s objectivity – the stranger “is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group” (Simmel 1-2) – allows her to act natural, she doesn’t know of the habit to not show emotions in public in Dunnet etc.

Tollands dancing in the vestry, but actually she was too proud to admit her humiliation and so she just wanted to see Mrs. Tolland suffer, as she made her suffer. It would have been important, that Mrs. Tolland had gone to Mari’ Harris herself and clear the air. It seems unlikely, that she didn’t notice Mari’ Harris anger after the event and if she really didn’t intend nothing bad she should have apologized.

Mrs. Tolland is behaving like a child, who doesn’t understand what she had done and is unable to put herself in the position of someone else. Walking out of the church the following Sunday was deteriorating the situation. Mrs. Tolland didn’t explain her reasons to nobody; the narrator Mrs. Todd is only guessing. But it must have been something more serious, because she never came to one meeting again and Mrs.

Todd states: “I see she was cryin’, or had been, as she passed by me” (Jewett 154),  so it appears she made the decision, that she doesn’t want to belong to the community and this is exactly how town’s people understood her behavior: “she kind o’ declared war, at least folks thought so, an’ war ‘twas from that time” (Jewett 157). Mrs. Todd also disapproved her behavior as she says, she wished Mrs.

Tolland made the impression to dislike her new habitat and also reluctant to adapt to it. She wanted the singers of the social circle to perform better, she couldn’t stand their music; she was unable to tolerate the minor talent of Mari’ Harris and the younger girl.

Her proficiency of the English Language is often described to be very low: “and she spoke very broken English, no better than a child” (Jewett 157). How can it be if someone lives in English-speaking Jamaica for at least one season – as the Mrs. Todd recalls “it had been a dreadful run o’ the fever that season,” and it’s very implausible, that her whole family and friends died in a shorter period of time – and afterwards also worked there as a singer and so she obviously had to communicate with people – just acquires a very low level? She was also married to an English-speaking husband and after they first arrived to Dunnet Landing, “they stayed a little while”, “then they went right off to sea again, an’ was a good many months” (Jewett 156). Assumedly there were mostly English-speaking passengers on board. “Next time he left her to live there alone, after they’d stopped at home together some weeks” (Jewett 156).  It seems like a plenty of time to learn a basic knowledge of English, so it appears logically that she merely didn’t want to learn the language of her new home.

The more information we get about a person, the more we can understand his character and the less threatening he seems. Mrs. Tolland totally ignores the power of communication to overcome her loneliness and rejection. The possibility of communication across the two cultures is therefore negated (Davis 92). We are neither informed, that she improved her English skills, nor that they are better shortly before her death: “all day she’d been restless, and we couldn’t understand what she wanted from her French speech” (Jewett 160).  Mrs Tolland was unwilling or merely unable to adapt the language of Dunnet Landing, and is therefore marked as other through her speech (Davis 92).

After collecting inappropriate behavior of Mrs. Tolland the following statement of Mrs. Blackett seems false: “she’s done the best a woman could do in her lonesome place, and she asks nothing of anybody except a little common kindness.” So apparently Mrs.

Blackett blames Dunnet Landing for the failing of Mrs. Tolland’s inclusion in the society. Furthermore, we receive some information, that Mrs. Tolland might have some kind of intellectual deficit, that could excuse her failure in the English language: “she hadn’t been brought up in high circles nor nothing o’ that kind” and Mrs. Todd often felt as if she was “dealing with a child’s mind” (Jewett 159). In the following I will take a closer look on Dunnet Landing’s society and their response to Mrs.

3.2 Rejection: Dunnet Landing society


The statement of Mrs. Blackett: “She’s a stranger in a strange land” (Jewett 154), suggests that she thinks Dunnet Landing is somehow a strange place – and with place she refers to the way people are.  The tale as a whole implies the need to reassess the foundations of Dunnet Landing’s community.

Mrs. Todd places herself for both the listener and reader in the forefront of that reassessment. We discover through her, that if the captains acted in Jamaica as good Christians, many in Dunnet did not (Anderson 393).

Like the storm that haunts the story with the threat of “danger offshore among the outer islands” (Jewett 152) the rising tide of new immigrants during the “nationalist nineties” was seen by many nativists as a threat to US jobs and American homogeneity (Schrag 188).

Mrs. Cap’n Tolland is not one of the late-century’s immigrants who yearn to be free or one of the some nine million hailing from Eastern Europe and Asia during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, because actually she is French. Still, the people in Dunnet Landing and Mis’ Tolland can be described as belonging to two different ethnic groups. Ethnic identity is defined as forged in groups sharing not only common descent but common cultural practices, symbols and tradition.

Miss Tolland is described as “sort of a pretty woman” (Jewett 155),  and Mrs. Todd “always thought Mis’ Tolland was good-looking, though she had as was reasonable, a sort of foreign cast, and she spoke very broken English, no better than a child.” It can be assumed, that Miss Tolland was of mixed race.

When Mrs. Todd sees the ghost mother of her, she describes a “woman’s dark face lookin’ right at us” (Jewett 167).  The word though in the citation above indicates, that the fact she has a foreign cast is something bad. Mrs. Todd is saying, she finds her pretty, although she is colored. It appears that colored people do have a bad reputation in Dunnet Landing. According to Simmel, there is a tension between the elements of nearness and distance, when the consciousness that only the quite general is common, stresses that what s not common.

In the case of Mrs. Tolland who is a stranger to the country, the city, the race, etc., however, this element is nothing individual, but the strangeness of origin, which is or could be common to strangers. That’s why, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as of a particular type and the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness (Simmel 3). The foreigner, who is both French and “American Africanist” (Schrag 189) stands in ambivalent contrast to a white community, where American Hellenism, which presented American culture as pure and worthy of preservation from alien taint – African and Semitic, is apparent.

Mrs. Tolland had a good knowledge about herbs and was well acquainted with the virtues of plants. People were daunted by her skills and thought she might have some dark powers: “an’ some o’ the neighbors told to an’ fro after she died that they knew enough not to provoke her" (Jewett 159). Her presumed practice of conjuration makes her an object of disdain and suspicion.

Mis’ Tolland’s ability to work charms, her free singing and dancing, and her strange looks raised suspicion among Dunnet’s residents. Moreover, her religious orientation – “We’d come to know she was a Catholic by her beads and all, and that had set some narrow minds against her” (Jewett 160) – create a chasm between her and the provincial Protestants of Dunnet Landing (Piacentino 94-95).

When Mrs. Tolland dances in the vestry, townspeople seem to naturally respond to the pleasant performance with clapping and trotting a foot, “twas so chatchin” (Jewett 157). In the “sober” light of the following day, it all appeared different. Mari’ Harris serves as the warden to safeguard ‘whiteness’ and represents the rest of the town in the following ways: It seems Mrs.

Eliza and her brother didn’t get along well, already before the arrival of Miss Tolland, “they weren’t on no kind o’ speakin’ terms”. The fact that her brother then got married to a stranger may have worsened the relationship and in the end Captain Tolland payed her off the house for triple of its money worth. The high price implies, that Eliza didn’t want to leave in the first place – and that she now had to leave because of the arrival of Miss Tolland – may have risen her anger and her reluctance.

Mrs Tolland has left a mark on Mrs. Todd and her environs, she lives on in Mrs. Todd not only in her memory, but through habit and habitat. Mrs. Todd has a print of Empress Josephine’s statue from her and the skill to make an omelette ‘like a child of France” (Jewett 159). frenchness is not only acceptable but serviceable, and the actual child of France, Mis’ Tolland receives by no means as warm a welcome or home in Dunnet Landing (Davis 93), a Maine fishing village.

Simmel states that a stranger is close to us, when we feel common features between him and ourselves of a “national, social, occupational, or generally human, nature” (Simmel 2). None of those features seem to be common between Mrs. Tolland and Dunnet Landing. Her beliefs and mannerisms clash with the intolerant, narrow attitudes prevalent in the Dunnet community (Piacentino 93).

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