Don't write in dialect

Only read a little bit last night (other than the Haggadah), finished story in American Fantastic Tales - In Old New England, by Sarah Orne Jewett. A rather dated tale of two unmarried sisters, count their father's gold on the night he dies, then are robbed overnight by a jealous neighbor. He's accused, tried, acquitted - and one of the sisters puts a curse on him after the trial: May his right hand wither, throughout the generations of his family, etc. And lo! That's just what happens - a farming accident, an illness, and injury, each of his descendants loses use of his (or her) right hand. A Biblical curse. The story's ludicrous in some ways, but does convey the hardship of early New England life, especially rural life (story not set in any specific locale, but Jewett wrote mostly about Maine, and very well in the one book I've read of hers, title something about the tall pines?). A lot of the story told in pseudo-rural dialect, and it makes me recall the line in Elements of Style: don't write in dialect unless your ear is good. To which I would add to almost everyone: Trust me, yours isn't. I notice the next story in the anthology is the great Yellow Wallpaper. That's truly a watershed story, in this book and really in American fiction - shifting the ground of the fantastic from the ghoulish and demonic into the domestic, into psychological realism. And it's a much creepier and disturbing story than the earlier tales of monstrous visitations. Reminds me of why the original movie Alien was so scary: because the monster was small, and inside us - more frightening than the huge threat from outside.