May Sarton
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May Sarton (May 3, 1912-July 16, 1995) was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist born in Wondelgem, Belgium. Many of her novels and poems are pellucid reflections of the lesbian experience.
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[edit] Biography
Eleonor Mary Sarton, a.k.a. May Sarton, was born on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium. Three years later her family moved to Boston, Massachusetts. She went to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and started theatre lessons in her late teens.
In 1945 she met her partner for the next thirteen years, Judy Matlack, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Honey in the Hive (1988) is about their relationship.[1] They separated when Sarton's father died and she moved to Nelson, New Hampshire. She later moved to York, Maine.
She lectured at various universities, namely Harvard University, and Wellesley College.
She died of breast cancer on July 16, 1995.[2]
[edit] Works and themes
When she published her more openly lesbian novel Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing in 1965, Sarton feared, rightly, that writing so strongly about lesbianism would lead to a diminution of the previously established value of her work. "The fear of homosexuality is so great that it took courage to write Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing," she wrote in Journal of Solitude 1973, "to write a novel about a woman homosexual who is not a sex maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive, to portray a homosexual who is neither pitiable nor disgusting, without sentimentality . . . ."
Sarton's 1961 novel The Small Room was an acclaimed meditation on teaching and a shrewd analysis of the price of excellence in women's education. Set at an all-women's college in New England loosely modeled on such schools as Radcliffe College, Smith College, and Mount Holyoke College, The Small Room focuses on the plight of a talented senior, Jane Seaman, protegee of a powerful faculty member, Professor Carryl Cope, who is discovered to have plagiarized an essay by Simone Weil, "The Iliad: The Poem of Force," for her own essay that was published in the college literary magazine. The resulting controversy roils the college community, posing issues of justice, fairness, and the need to take psychological issues into account in assessing a student's conduct in violation of the code of academic conduct. A subtheme of this book is the longstanding and intimate lesbian relationship between Professor Cope and Ollive Hunt, a trustee of Appleton College. Hunt opposes the college's decision to hire a psychiatrist to serve the needs of such students as Jane Seaman and it is implied that, when the college takes that step, she will refuse to leave her fortune to the college; in addition, that decision impliedly helps to sever the relationship between Carryl Cope and Ollive Hunt. The story's viewpoint character, a young professor named Lucy Winter, discovers the plagiarism, realizes that it was caused by Jane Seaman's psychological ill-health, and helps her colleagues and the college administration chart a course through the resulting controversy. The novel bears traces of its origins, chiefly in the remarkably frequent resort the characters have to cigarettes and martinis, and its occasionally mannered writing can leave it feeling quite dated for modern readers.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Poetry books
[edit] Nonfiction
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[edit] Novels
[edit] Children's books
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[edit] References
- ^ Pobo, Kenneth (2002), “Sarton, May”, glbtq.com, <http://www.glbtq.com/literature/sarton_m.html>. Retrieved on 2007-08-29.
- ^ biography
[edit] External links
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