SOURCE: Anderson, Dawn Holt. “May Sarton's Women.” In Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Susan Koppelman Cornillon, pp. 243-50. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972.

In the following essay, Anderson maintains that Sarton is an invaluable model for young women writers.

Women in fiction, like women in our culture, usually find, and sometimes lose, their identity in institutionalized relationships such as marriage and motherhood, waiting to see what their men and their children will demand them to be. If they break out of these molds, they usually turn to the business world, a world defined by males, to find their success. Few writers provide women with any models for relationships or ways of life and work outside those which have been codified and sanctified over the years. May Sarton's work, however, is resplendent with new models. Her women characters are alone, forging thoughtful and...