SOURCE: "Spinning Friends: May Sarton's Literary Spinsters," in Old Maids to Radical Spinsters: Unmarried Women in the Twentieth-Century Novel, edited by Laura L. Doan, University of Illinois Press, 1991, pp. 155-68.

[Miner is an American novelist, short story writer, editor, critic, and educator. In the essay below, she examines the ways in which Sarton represents lesbians and single women in her writings, noting in particular the relationship between her fiction and nonfiction.]

In the mirror she recognized her self, her life companion, for better or worse. She looked at this self with compassion this morning, unmercifully prodded and driven as she had been for just under seventy years.

                —May Sarton, Mrs, Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing

She who has chosen her Self, who defines her Self, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is Self-identified, is a Spinster….

                —Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

Spinning a web...