“So We Die before Our Own Eyes”: Willful Sterility in The Country of the Pointed Firs

This essay locates Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs in relation to contemporaneous sociological discourse decrying New England's diminished birthrate as a harbinger of national decline. Jewett's pairing of nativist nostalgia with a progressive vision of women's independence illuminates the conflicting demands of white nationalism and feminism in Roosevelt's America.