SOURCE: Stout, Janis P. “A Wordless Balm: Silent Communication in the Novels of May Sarton.” Essays in Literature 20, no. 2 (fall 1993): 310-23.

In the following essay, Stout explores the importance of silent communication in Sarton's novels.

This voice itself and not the language spoken. 

—May Sarton, “A Voice”

The characters in May Sarton's many and various novels are typically engaged in two basic recurrent actions, the effort to shape and to understand their inner selves and the effort to form sustaining relationships with others.¹ Often, the dual task proves too much for them; like Ellen, near the end of Kinds of Love, they can only hope that the future will produce more coherence than the past. Successful or not, the grappling for shared understanding carried on by Sarton's people proceeds, in its crucial moments, tacitly as much as verbally. Her characters tend to communicate with themselves and with each...