SOURCE: Sibley, Agnes. “The Later Novels: Communion.” In May Sarton, pp. 104-43. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972.

In the following essay, Sibley identifies the theme of communion as central to Sarton's later novels.

In the second group of Miss Sarton's novels, published before Kinds of Love (1970), the need for communion is dominant. The passionate individual who so often appeared in the early novels is still prominent in the second group, but now his need is not so much for the ordering of his own inner chaos as for dealing somehow with chaos in the world. To some extent, of course, the attempt to bring order into both the inner and the outer realm is the same process; personal passion must be sublimated and become concern for the outer world. But the emphasis in the second group of novels is not so much on a necessary detachment as on the...