SOURCE: Woodward, Kathleen. “May Sarton and Fictions of Old Age.” In Gender and Literary Voice, edited by Janet Todd, pp. 108-27. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980.

In the following essay, Woodward traces Sarton's approach to aging in her novels and journals, contending that her “portrayal of old age is a welcome departure from the Western literary tradition of gerontophobia.”

If we do not know what we are going to be, we cannot know what we are; let us recognize ourselves in this old man or that old woman. It must be done if we are to take upon ourselves the entirety of our human state. And when it is done we will no longer acquiesce in the misery of the last age; we will no longer be indifferent, because we shall feel concerned, as indeed we are.

—Simone de Beauvoir The Coming of Age (1970)

Although Simone de Beauvoir is...