Maine Women in History Rediscovering Their Lives and Legacies

The roster reads like a Who’s-Who of women’s literature: Edna St. Vincent Millay got her start in Midcoast Maine. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” during a three-year stint in Brunswick. And Sarah Orne Jewett memorialized life Down East in “The Country of the Pointed Firs.”

Maine has a long tradition of excellence when it comes to women writers – even the state’s first novel was penned by a woman: Sally Sayward Barrell Keating Wood of York, whose first novel was “Julia and the Illuminated Baron” in 1800 under the pen name of A Lady from Massachusetts. However, their legacy may be in jeopardy.

“Maine students are just not reading these writers,” said Margery Irvine, who teaches Maine literature at the University of Maine. “They just don’t know about them. I mean, Jewett, she might be the best writer of the three, but she just does not appeal to young people. They feel as though not enough happens, which is exactly what her point was. She wrote about ordinary people doing ordinary things.”

Millay, on the other hand, wrote “these really sassy and sexy poems,” according to Kathleen Lignell Ellis, a Millay scholar and professor at UM.

“She was called the ‘it girl’ of the 1920s,” Ellis said of Millay. “Everyone wanted to know her and be around her – especially the men.”

It was a star turn for Millay, a tomboy from Maine whose reading of “Renaescence” inspired a wealthy Camden summer resident to pay for her college education – first at Barnard, then Vassar. From there, New York – and the world – was her oyster.

Her 1923 volume “The Harp Weaver and Other Poems” won a Pulitzer Prize, and with its release, “she quickly became the voice of a nation’s women,” Bob Niss wrote in “Faces of Maine.” Ellis said Millay’s verses still resonate with her students.

“They can understand things she’s writing about – the common concerns about love, the desire to be free, the desire to be independent,” Ellis said.

Though Jewett, Millay and Stowe gained acclaim on an international stage, each had strong ties to Maine.

Stowe and her husband, Calvin, moved to Maine when Calvin was appointed professor of natural and revealed religion at Bowdoin, according to Waterboro Public Library’s Maine Writers Index. There she wrote her first novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which was initially published in 10 magazine installments.

In 1862, after the Stowes had moved to Andover, Mass., Harriet published “The Pearl of Orr’s Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine.” Years later, Jewett would reference “The Pearl” in the preface to “Deephaven,” stating that it helped her “see with new eyes” how she could incorporate her locality into her writing, according to the Writers Index. Though Stowe’s work was influential at the time, Irvine suspects her legacy has less to do with her writing and more for her role in the anti-slavery movement and the ensuing Civil War.

Legend has it that when Stowe met President Abraham Lincoln, he said, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.”

“I think we know her for social and historical reasons more than literary reasons,” Irvine said.

As for Sarah Orne Jewett, Irvine says her literary importance will live on, whether or not students like reading her work.

“She may not be popular, but I don’t think it matters,” Irvine said. “She’s a very fine observer and writer.”

Jewett, a South Berwick native, developed her knack for observation in her father’s horse and buggy. He was a doctor, and he occasionally allowed her to accompany him on house calls. According to Kate Kennedy’s “More Than Petticoats: Remarkable Maine Women,” Jewett wasn’t much for school – nor did her parents force the issue, as she had rheumatoid arthritis – but she loved watching and interacting with people.

“I grew up naturally as a plant grows,” she wrote, “not having been clipped back or forced in any direction.”

According to Kennedy, “Sarah was drawn to write what she called ‘sketches’ of country life … but at the heart of Sarah’s fiction, as in her life, lay friendships between women, whom she portrayed as self-reliant, independent and in charge of their own lives.”

It’s no wonder Jewett’s work – and the work of such greats as Stowe and Millay – holds a special place in literary history. Irvine, whose own daughter played a young Millay in a documentary film about the poet, hopes to see that continue.

“I wish that our … school systems did more with Maine writers,” she said. “I know they do some, but I think it gives young Maine people such a sense of pride in knowing great writers who have lived here and worked here.”