May
Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16,
1995), an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Many of her works
reflect the lesbian experience.

This is the
thirty-fourth  post in a series highlighting the best gay and lesbian authors
from the 20th century (with a few before and after that period) who have
recorded in fiction, and nonfiction, the history of gay people telling what life
is, and was, during an important time of
history.

    





Biography

Sarton
was born on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium. Her parents were
science historian George Sarton and his wife, the English artist Mabel
Eleanor Elwes. In 1915, 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. They separated in
1956, when Sarton's father died and Sarton moved to Nelson, New
Hampshire. Honey in the Hive (1988) is about their relationship.
Sarton later moved to York, Maine. She died of breast cancer on July 16, 1995. She is buried in Nelson, New Hampshire.

       



Works and themes


Sarton's
1961 novel The Small Room was an acclaimed[citation needed] 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

     




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 ..."{Journal of Solitude, 1973.
Pg.90-91}
Bibliography
Poetry books
Encounter in April (1937)
Inner Landscape
The Lion and the Rose
The Land of Silence
In Time Like Air
Cloud, Stone, Sun, Vine
A Private Mythology
As Does New Hampshire
A Grain of Mustard Seed
A Durable Fire
Collected Poems, 1930-1973
Selected Poems of May Sarton (edited by Serena Sue Hilsinger and Lois Brynes)
Halfway to Silence
Letters from Maine
Coming Into Eighty (1994) Winner of the Levinson Prize
May Sarton's Well (edited by Edith Royce Schade)
Nonfiction
I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography
Plant Dreaming Deep
Journal of a Solitude
A World of Light
The House by the Sea
Recovering: A Journal
At Seventy: A Journal
Writings on Writings
After the Stroke
May Sarton: A Self-Portrait
Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year    Novels
The Single Hound
The Bridge of Years
Shadow of a Man
A Shower of Summer Days
Faithful are the Wounds
The Birth of a Grandfather (1957)
The Fur Person
The Small Room (1961)
Joanna and Ulysses
Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
Miss Pickthorn and Mr. Hare
The Poet and the Donkey
Kinds of Love
As We Are Now
Crucial Conversations (1975)
A Reckoning
Anger
The Magnificent Spinster
The Education of Harriet Hatfield
The Poet And The Donkey
Children's books
Punch's Secret
A Walk Through the Woods'
"Who is Eva From As We Are Now?"