A Country Doctor (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)

At a glance:

Characters Discussed

Nan Prince, a young girl who wants to become a doctor. As a child, she is mischievous but likes to care for animals. She assists the local doctor, who rears her after her mother’s and grandmother’s deaths. The girl attends medical school, despite pressure from her relatives and her suitor. Upon completing her medical education, she returns to the town to assist the doctor and eventually to take over his practice.

Adeline Thacher Prince, Nan’s mother. She returns home to Oldfields to die, bringing her infant daughter. She is a wild, rebellious woman who reputedly is addicted to drink. She resents her husband’s family because they opposed her marriage.

Mrs. Thacher, Nan’s maternal grandmother, who cares for the child until her own death.

Dr. Leslie, the doctor in Oldfields. He looks after Nan and rears her in his own home after her grandmother’s death. He encourages her study of medicine.

Miss Nancy Prince, a wealthy spinster, Nan’s aunt. She is shocked at Nan’s seemingly unladylike ambition to be a doctor and tries to dissuade the girl from studying medicine. She also tries to interest Nan in a young man, George Gerry, in hopes that Nan will marry and abandon her ambition to practice medicine.

George Gerry, a young friend of Miss Nancy Prince. He and Nan fall in love, as Nan’s aunt hopes, but George cannot persuade Nan to marry him and abandon medicine.

Bibliography:

Blanchard, Paula. Sarah Orne Jewett: Her World and Her Work. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1994. Discusses A Country Doctor as an autobiographical novel. Dr. Leslie resembles Jewett’s physician father, and Nan’s decision to pursue vocation over marriage is drawn from Jewett’s personal experience.

Donovan, Josephine. Sarah Orne Jewett. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980. Analyzes her fictional themes of city versus country and isolation versus community.

Nagel, Gwen L., ed. Critical Essays on Sarah Orne Jewett. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984. Reprints early reviews and contains original critical essays on her works, several of which discuss A Country Doctor’s relation to Jewett’s other fiction.

Roman, Margaret. Sarah Orne Jewett: Reconstructing Gender. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992. Argues that Jewett creates male and female characters who do not conform to conventions in order to challenge accepted notions about the sexes and to project a world in which any person may live and grow freely.

Westbrook, Perry D. Acres of Flint: Sarah Orne Jewett and Her Contemporaries. Rev. ed. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1981. Shows how Jewett’s work relates to the local-color literary tradition developed by New England women writers after the Civil War.