Flesh vs. Spirit
When an appealing ornithologist comes to the Maine woods, young Sylvia must decide whether to please her new friend by showing him the nesting place of the heron he wishes to kill for his collection, or remain loyal to her animal companions. Although the nine-year-old girl would never consider her situation in these terms, the decision Sylvia must make is the choice between flesh and spirit—between earthly human pleasures and the natural world. The narrator states the conflict in a sigh directed at the reader: ‘‘Alas, if the great wave of human interest which flooded for the first time this dull little life should sweep away the satisfaction of an existence heart to heart with nature and the dumb life of the forest!’’ The hunter’s presence represents two aspects of fleshly desire. First, he offers Sylvia ten dollars if she will betray the heron. Although the sum seems to mean little to him, for Sylvia it is a great temptation: ‘‘He can make them rich with money; he has promised it, and they are poor now.’’ When he first offers the money, her head swims in confusion as she thinks of all she might buy. She is dazed and confused for the rest of the story, until the moment she decides not to tell the secret. Secondly, the hunter represents—albeit in a subtle way for the young girl—the fleshly temptations of sex. It is his maleness she responds to, as ‘‘the woman’s heart, asleep in the child, [is] vaguely thrilled by a dream of love.’’ When Sylvia decides to keep her secret, she chooses grace over treasure, as the narrator’s final plea to the natural world emphasizes: ‘‘Whatever treasures were lost to her . . . bring your gifts and graces . . . to this lonely country child!’’

Rites of Passage
Sylvia’s movement toward her decision follows the typical pattern of the hero story or the Bildungsroman. Before Sylvia can move from innocence to maturity, or from common mortal to hero, she must undergo a ritual test to prove her worthiness and strength. The girl feels at home in the forest—she does not wish to leave—and at times she feels as one with the natural world. But her relationship to nature has never been tested. Appropriately, her test takes the form of a literal climb to a higher place, from where she can see the world. When she approaches the highest tree where the land is highest, ‘‘the last of its generation,’’ she does not know what she will do. She has often thought that from the top of this tree she might see the ocean, but she has never dared. Jewett presents this climb in the language of the hero myth: ‘‘What a spirit of adventure, what wild ambition! What fancied triumph and delight and glory.’’ As Sylvia begins ‘‘with utmost bravery to mount to the top of it’’ the birds and squirrels scold her, the thorns and twigs seem to intentionally grab at her. But as she climbs on resolutely, the great tree itself assumes an active role in helping her, until at last she is at the top: ‘‘Sylvia’s face was like a pale star, if one had seen it from the ground . . . and she stood trembling and tired and wholly triumphant.’’ But the test is not yet over. Sylvia still thinks that what she has achieved, she has achieved for the hunter. She expects to return to him, claim the money, claim his love and admiration. She is surprised to find (although the reader is not) that in the end she cannot reveal the heron’s nesting place. She has completed the test and come out the other side a stronger, wiser, more mature person. Typical of the young hero, however, she has gone through the rites of passage though she does not yet know the extent of her own power.

In “A White Heron,” Jewett presents her readers with a series of conflicting values, all of which may be included under the theme of the country versus the city. By having Sylvia choose nature over civilization, Jewett clearly indicates her own preference while she also acknowledges the cost of making that choice.

Jewett’s comparison of Sylvia to the “wretched dry geranium that belonged to a town neighbor” is instructive, for Sylvia thrives, as would the geranium, on being transplanted from town to country. When she first meets the hunter, Sylvia hangs her head “as if the stem of it were broken.” Clearly, Jewett means to suggest that Sylvia is indeed a flower, a part of nature. She not only is accepted by the wild animals but also feels “as if she were a part of the gray shadows and the moving leaves.” Sylvia’s ties to nature are also reflected in Jewett’s description of her bare feet and fingers, which are like “bird’s claws,” a simile that identifies her with birds and helps explain her decision to save the white heron.

The hunter who pursues the white heron is from the city and is therefore tainted by civilization. In fact, like the “great red-faced boy,” he represents a threat to Sylvia: He may not physically harm her, but he can corrupt her by enticing her to “sell out” nature by taking money for information. Jewett does not condemn the hunter for hunting in itself; Mrs. Tilley obviously understands that hunting produces game birds (“pa’tridges,” for example) to be eaten in order to survive. On the other hand, hunting all kinds of birds (including thrushes and sparrows) simply in order to stuff them for one’s own “collection” is a notion “foreign” to Mrs. Tilley and incomprehensible to Sylvia: “She could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much.” In effect, her first perception of him as the “enemy” is correct.

The “persuasive” young man’s corruption is signaled by his situation when Sylvia meets him. Like many other moral wanderers in dark woods (Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown comes immediately to mind), the hunter is “lost.” When he is guided to a hermitage and receives Mrs. Tilley’s hospitality, he repays it by attempting to exploit Sylvia’s obvious fondness for him and Mrs. Tilley’s equally obvious need for money. He is successful in enlisting Mrs. Tilley’s support, but Sylvia has grown and learned important lessons from her climb up the pine tree.

In many ways, “A White Heron” is an initiation story with mythic overtones. A young girl who lives in cloistered innocence is exposed to temptation from the outside world. The agent of temptation uses her developing interest in the opposite sex to seduce her into betraying the natural world to which she belongs. Although her “woman’s heart,” which had been “asleep,” is “vaguely thrilled” by the young hunter, she also gains new insights into herself and the world of nature. Her morning journey, which takes her through the dangerous bog, and her subsequent climb up the pine tree both test her and teach her. When she negotiates the “passage” from the oak to the pine, she undertakes a “great enterprise,” one at once challenging and fulfilling. From the top of the pine she can see the “vast and awesome world” that lies beyond the safety of the farm. Unfortunately for the hunter, she also sees the white heron and his mate. The two worlds are in conflict, and the parallel between the herons and her own situation is readily apparent to the “sadder but wiser” Sylvia: Her happiness at helping the object of her infatuation can be achieved only at the expense of destroying another “domestic” situation, which may be more significant. In a kind of epilogue Jewett writes, “Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been—who can tell?”