Sarah Orne Jewetts Miss Tempys Watchers :: Sarah Orne Jewett Miss Tempys Essays

Sarah Orne Jewett's Miss Tempy's Watchers Sarah Orne Jewett was born in Berwick, Maine, 275 miles away from Oakfield, where my grandmother lives. Jewett’s story, â€Å"Miss Tempy’s Watchers,† takes place in a small farming town in New Hampshire, yet as I read the story for the first time, I was certain it took place in the small northern Maine town, and my grandmother was a subject of the author’s study. Jewett makes use of the dialect New England is known for by following very broad rules as well as the pickiest details one might never notice unless one were looking with ultimate scrutiny or from personal experience. Jewett chose certain phrase structure to make her characters’ speech genuine. Sarah Ann Binson, one of Miss Tempy’s watchers, describes how Tempy â€Å"never did like to hear folks goin’ about themselves.† To some this phrase may be foreign, but to an older New Englander it means to speak of oneself braggingly. Another syntactic trait of the speech is the frequent regularization of verb forms. Mrs. Crowe, the other watcher, says, â€Å"Tempy come right up after they rode by,† and Sarah Ann later asks if Mrs. Crowe made cupcakes â€Å"while you was home to-day.† These are both obvious grammatical errors, but the two women were only trying to make sense of a very complicated set of rules. To two women of middle and upper-middle class who are not particularly familiar with a true upper class where the English language is treated with greater care, they were only speaking in a manner that seemed most natural. Something else worth mentionin g is when Sarah Ann asks Mrs. Crows if she remembers a certain girl. Mrs. Crowe answers, â€Å"Certain,† and Sarah goes on about her. A stickler for grammatical perfection would insist she say, â€Å"Certainly,† or at least, â€Å"For certain,† but in the New England dialect of the older generation, there is nothing wrong with just â€Å"certain.† Sarah Ann Binson, the less wealthy of the two watchers, uses the word â€Å"ain’t,† but Mrs. Crow, the one of slightly higher class, never lowers herself to such unsophisticated speech. Sarah Ann also adopts a typically Acadian dialect (owing to her location in a New Hampshire farming area) when she tells of how Tempy once said, â€Å"I’m only a-gettin’ sleepier and sleepier.† The reader can’t be sure if it is a direct quote or if the structure is her own, but it is clear it is not entirely foreign to their ears.