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5.1 Sarton’s old understanding of aging in Journal of a Solitude 11
5.2 Sarton’s new understanding of aging in At Seventy 13
5.3 Reasons for Sarton’s new understandings 14
5.3.1 Poetry-reading tour 14
5.3.2 Reading poetry 15
5.3.3 Writing poetry 16
6.Conclusion 17
6.1 A Summary of This Essay 17
6.2 The Value of the Research 17
References 18
1. Introduction
1.1 Brief introduction of May Sarton and At Seventy
May Sarton is a pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912-July 16, 1995), an American memoirist, novelist and poet with great reputation. Among those titles the poet that Sarton most wished to stand. She strongly believes that women should claim their own identity and have their lives. Her works were embraced not only by feminist scholars but also lesbians. Sarton is a productive writer and poet, during her writing career of over sixty years, Sarton has written more than twenty novels, twenty-five collections of poetry, journals and memoirs in her life. The works of journals and memoirs are popular in America and even all over the world.
At Seventy, together with Journal of a Solitude (1972-1973), The House by the Sea (1974-1976), and Recovering (1978-1979), belongs to the series of the journals and memoirs, which can be seen as the most enduring work by May Sarton.
In At Seventy, Sarton keeps journals of her seventy-year-old life to patch the emotional fragments up. Sometimes she delivers speeches on poetry reading trips and has some friends to visit. Her journal is an exploration of old life and her personal reflections. At Seventy can be seen as the successive of Journal of a Solitude because Sarton posts new ideas about aging. After being able to balance separateness and closeness to the outside world, Sarton’s attitudes towards life become more positive and she is more open-minded compared with before.
Sarton talks about death, friendship, nature, poetry and current events in her journals directly or indirectly. Examining Sarton’s old life especially the 1970s, we will find out though Sarton suffered greatly from a mastectomy and lost her good friend Judith Matlack, she learned more about life and ageing, which were two most important themes in her later writing career. Sarton expresses such deep feelings in Honey in the Hive(1982) to memorize her precious friendship with Matlack and what she has learned in life.
1.2. Literature review
1.2.1 current study about Sarton home and abroad
There are few materials about May Sarton available, studies about this great woman in literature is still at a starting point in China. The most useful materials are Sarton’s several journals translated by Guohua Yang,: Journal of a Solitude(1973), The House by the sea(1976) Recovering(1980) and After the Stroke(1988). Jiechen, a Chinese writer wrote a book review of Sarton’s journals called Meet with May Sarton in 2005. In 2008, Fu Na published her postgraduate paper, Beauty of Phoenix: On May Sarton from Feminism Angle to summarize the predecessor study on May Sarton’s female writing themes and the development course of May Sarton’s female consciousness.
Researches on May Sarton are at a mature level in the western countries. Mark K. Fulk’s Understanding May Sarton presents Sarton’s life, experience and literary works comprehensively. In chapter1, the author states that one of the major themes of Sarton’ art is solitude, “ suggesting the religious significance of a cloistered life, yet pesting it of orthodox religious meaning, and presenting it as the ideal position for a write to reflect on her life and world” (Fulk, 1968: 3). While Elizabeth Evans wrote May Sarton, Revisited in order to distill Sarton’s themes reflected in her works and trace the development of them through analyzing her memoirs, journals, novels and poetry. Evans points out that “the Sarton’s papers gives us documentation for many that May Sarton enjoyed, engaged in, profited from, contributed to” (Evans, 1989: 98).