SOURCE: White, Leah E. “Silenced Stories: May Sarton's Journals As a Form of Discursive Resistance.” In Women's Life-Writing: Finding Voice/Building Community, edited by Linda S. Coleman, pp. 81-90. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997.

[In the following essay, White scrutinizes Sarton's struggle with depression as expressed through her journals.]

It is tricky business offering the world a story that does not fit into mainstream culture and yet has its own life, its own fragile right to exist.

—Carmela Delia Lanza

May Sarton could be considered one of the century's most prolific writers. Before her death in 1995, Sarton had written over twenty books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Despite the remarkable contribution she has made to the literature of the past century, Sarton's works have been largely ignored by major critics. Maureen Teresa McCarthy argues that Sarton's fierce independence may have contributed to her lack of recognition by critics. McCarthy describes Sarton as having “always marched to the beat of a different drummer, in defiance of a culture that has increasingly demanded conformity” (4). However, it is this defiance that makes Sarton's work attractive to feminist literary scholars.

Although Sarton's prolific career has offered many interesting texts for analysis, her published journals perhaps provide the best glimpse into who she was as a writer and an individual. Of particular interest is how Sarton discusses her experiences with depression. Because it can be very difficult for a woman to openly articulate her experience with depression, many women have turned to journal writing as a means through which one is able to articulate depression and attempt to regain emotional balance. Journals offer a safe place in which a woman is able to express her honest feelings and emotions. For Sarton, the journals is a place for accomplishing self-analysis. When describing the motivations behind women's autobiographical writings, Estelle Jelinek explains that many women attempt to articulate “their self-worth, to clarify, to affirm, and to authenticate their self image” (15). In a Ms. magazine interview, May Sarton describes her own journal writing as “my way to turn all that talking about myself into talking to myself. It separates what is important from what is not important” (Hershman 26). Sarton demonstrates that as a “feminine form” the journal offers a voice to women who may feel pressured to remain silent about aspects of their lives (Hogan 95).

The struggle with depression is clear in Sarton's journals. Jeanne Braham explains that all of Sarton's journals were written “on the heels of personal crisis, when self-assessment was crucial for restoring emotional balance and spiritual health” (153). Of additional importance is how Sarton releases her anger. According to Janice Wood Wetzel, in our society it is not acceptable for women to openly express their anger (91). She explains that women are socialized to value the relational aspects of life, rather than what might provide them with a sense of autonomy (91). Blatant expressions of anger could threaten a relational dimension and indicate a move toward autonomy, thus women are discouraged from such displays. Wetzel goes on to explain that women recognize the restriction of independence and consequently feel inadequate (95). These feelings of inadequacy can easily result in depression. Through the use of her journals, May Sarton violates the social assumption that she ought not to express such emotions. In fact, Carolyn Heilbrun lauds Sarton's Journal of a Solitude as a “watershed in women's autobiography” because it is one of the first published works to honestly discuss female rage (13).

Journal writing places a woman into a position of control over her own life. Female autobiographical writings, such as journals, are extremely valuable to women's resistance efforts. As Hélène Cixous advocates, “Woman must write herself; must write about women and bring women to writing. … Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement” (875). Autobiography is perhaps the most powerful tool women have to help them accomplish this type of female centered writing. Through autobiographical texts, women are able to offer their own interpretations and reevaluations of the power structures that seek to control and silence them. Because the safety of the journal allows women to center themselves as subjects, journal writing functions as a form of discursive resistance.

One reason why the journal is especially effective in terms of resistance is that when it is made public, the journal emphasizes individual differences while simultaneously drawing others together as they recognize elements of commonality between themselves and the author. Because autobiographical writings enable women to recognize and value their differences, a mutual respect for such differences allows for the formation of powerful coalitions through which the oppressive ideological structures of society may be challenged (Lionnet xi). Thus, as the journal highlights an individual voice it also allows for the development of a community of others who recognize the fidelity of the life experiences expressed in the journal.

Because Sarton wrote her journals for publication, the journals illustrate her personal struggle with depression in a manner that is available to a wider audience than simply the self. Braham writes, “Sarton is increasingly conscious of moving from solitary experience into dialogue with a reader, making her experience available ‘as a lens of empathy’” (163). While illustrating her personal struggle, Sarton's journals equip others with insight into how journal writing may be used to resist negative forces in their own lives. Carol Virginia Pohli explains this effect of Sarton's work writing, “Female readers take courage from her texts because they are convinced that Sarton writes out of her actual experiences as a woman who refuses to emulate behavior expected of women” (220). Sarton's public admission of this type of resistance, through her journal writings, encourages her readers to consider their own resistance efforts.

Journal writing unquestionably provides many women with a means through which they are able to make sense of and resist the oppressive dailiness of their lives. An analysis of how May Sarton uses journal writing as a way to confront her depression, will serve as an example of how journal writing functions as a powerful tool of resistance.

Not only do Sarton's journals offer her a means through which she is able to publicly as well as privately resist the oppressive forces in her life, they also provide her readers with a voice to which they can relate. Braham writes, “Though rooted in idiosyncratic experience, Sarton's journals seek to connect with a wide readership by revealing the need to create order out of chaos, reentry out of withdrawal, health out of illness” (153). A mutual sense of understanding concerning the difficulties of living with depression is developed between Sarton and her readers.

In order to explain how Sarton deals with her depression, three of her earlier journals, Journal of a Solitude, The House by the Sea and Recovering, will be discussed. Before illustrating how Sarton travels through a variety of stages of depression, I will show how her journals demonstrate her awareness of and desire to develop a female consciousness.

Initially, Sarton's journals clearly show that she was aware of the social pressures experienced by women. According to Bettina Aptheker, many women possess a distinct consciousness of social reality based on a sexual division in labor and institutional subordination to men. Because many women share the experience of living a life socially guided by prescribed female roles, they share a consciousness informed by their experiences. In some cases, such as Sarton's, depression becomes a part of that consciousness. Wetzel connects the threat of depression to the way in which labor is divided in our society (92). As women continually expend their energy on tasks that do not in return refuel them, they may become emotionally as well as physically exhausted, thus making them more susceptible to depression. Sarton's journals illustrate how her understanding of the social pressure experienced by women helped her to confront her own depression.

Although Sarton chose to live a life of solitude and personal artistic work, she did not escape the influence of social pressures. For example, in an early entry in Journal of a Solitude Sarton attempts to make sense of the conditions of women's lives:

When I said above that women were rarely as whole as men, I felt I must go back and think some more. It is harder for women, perhaps, to be “one-pointed,” Much harder for them to clear space around whatever it is they want to do beyond household chores and family life. Their lives are fragmented … this is the cry I get in so many letters—the cry not so much for a “room of one's own” as a time of one's own.

(56)

Sarton is also painfully aware of the pressures felt by the younger generation of women. Her willingness to mentor young female students provided her with insight into the conditions of their lives. In response to the news that two former students, who had set aside writing once they got married and had children, had begun to write poetry again, Sarton writes, “That news made me happy. It also made me aware once more of how rarely a woman is able to continue to create after she marries and has children” (Journal 70).

A few years later, writing in A House by the Sea, Sarton mentions two women she has agreed to advise while they are working on their master's theses:

These young women are determined to have children as a part of a fulfilled life and to do original work as well. I admire them wholeheartedly. But I am always up against my own hard view that it is next to impossible to lead a fulfilled life as a human being and do original work of the highest caliber, if one is a woman.

(133)

Wetzel refers to this feeling of despair as a woman's sense of existential guilt, or the realization of one's inability to reach one's full potential, often leading to feelings of depression. Wetzel writes that “default on the task of becoming the self results in depression, represented by the absence of creative energy which blocks the way of the spirit” (101). A woman's feelings of depression may evolve from the realization that she is unable to reach personal fulfillment before she has even begun her journey. Thus, although Sarton attempted to surround herself in solitude, she was unable to avoid knowledge of, and experience with, the problems associated with the division of labor and women's subordination by men.

Sarton's journals also illustrate how she used journal writing as a way to communicate with her readers. Sarton's journals contain several references to letters she has received from readers. This type of response from Sarton helps to create a dialogue between her and her readers. Pohli writes, “In Sarton's world, author and reader are live, interdependent, talking moral entities whose mutual engagement with a clearly written work fertilizes a clearer sense of identity” (233). Susan Stanford Friedman argues that a “collective consciousness of self” is crucial to a woman's process of self-definition (56). She writes, “Instead of seeing themselves as solely unique, women often explore their sense of shared identity with other women, an aspect of identity that exists in tension with a sense of their own uniqueness” (44). Sarton's journals serve as one possible means through which people sharing similar experiences may find mutual understanding.

Frequently, Sarton responds to reader's letters in a manner that identifies and helps to develop a shared female consciousness. For example, in Journal of a Solitude, Sarton rewrites a portion of a reader's letter. The reader writes,

So much holds me back. My own inertia, the choice I made ten years ago to be second in marriage, the children, my background. … Just being a woman. It is difficult. Does one give up a measure of security, and whatever else is necessary, to develop? Can one be within the framework of a marriage, do you think? I envy your solitude with all my heart, and your courage to live as you must.

(122)

To this Sarton responds, “It is not irresponsible women who ask that question, but often women with children, caring women, who feel deeply frustrated and lost, who feel they are missing their ‘real lives’ all the time” (122). Sarton continues with a lengthy journal entry that discusses many of the current issues facing women. This exchange of ideas between reader and author helps to build and promote an understanding for a mutually shared female consciousness. As one of Sarton's readers wrote, “You have helped me [recognize] a spiritual bond between myself and other women” (qtd. in Pohli 225).

The theme of journal writing as a way to accomplish emotional work is also frequently found in Sarton's journals. Sarton is quick to recognize that journal writing is a valuable tool in her life, especially when attempting to make sense of her experiences with depression. In a 1982 interview, Sarton explains that both Journal of a Solitude and Recovering were written “as an exercise to handle serious depression” (Saum 116). She opens Recovering writing, “I had thought not to begin a new journal until I am seventy, four years from now, but perhaps the time has come to sort myself out, and see whether I can restore a sense of meaning and continuity to my life by this familiar means” (9). A few days later she adds, “I am glad I decided to begin a journal again. It is a way of sorting myself out, that self that has been too dispersed for too long” (Recovering 15).

Often journal writers will return to old journals as a way to review past life events. Sarton occasionally looks back on the purpose of a previous journal. After several years of general happiness, Sarton reflects on Journal of a Solitude, writing, “The Journal of a Solitude had been a way of dealing with anguish; was it that happiness is harder to communicate, or that when one is happy there is little incentive even to try to sort out daily experience as it happens” (House 7).

Clearly Sarton uses her own journals as a way to help her work through the daily experiences in her life. For Sarton, as for other journal writers, journals are one of the best means through which one can make sense of a life. Margo Culley explains that many women turn to journal writing because it is “one place where they [are] permitted, indeed encouraged, to indulge full ‘self-centeredness’” (16). The journal may very well be the only place where a woman is free from the social pressures that bear down on her. Whereas the labor of a woman's life rarely allows her room for her own endeavors, in a journal she becomes the “self as the subject,” free to indulge whatever personal concern she may have (Culley 15).

With these base ideas in Sarton's journals explained, a closer look at how Sarton writes about her own depression may be taken. Depression itself can be fragmented, sometimes staying a few days and in severe cases lasting for months. Even when one has weathered an episode of depression, there is the underlying tension that a new wave may soon begin. Sarton's journals illustrate this cyclical nature of depression. In her work we can see the daily stress of the illness.

Sarton's journals show that she can sink into severe and lengthy depressions. Much of Journal of a Solitude articulates such an experience. Toward the beginning of this journal Sarton writes,

Cracking open the inner world again, writing even a couple pages, threw me back into depression. … I was attacked by a storm of tears, those tears that appear to be related to frustration, to buried anger, and come upon me without warning. I woke yesterday so depressed that I did not get up until after eight.

(13)

Her experience while writing Recovering is similar. The following passage not only expresses a sense of despair, but also demonstrates a previous knowledge of this type of feeling: “When there is personal darkness, when there is pain to be overcome, when we are forced to renew ourselves against all odds, the psychic energy required simply to survive has tremendous force, as great as that of a bulb pushing up through icy ground in spring” (16). The sense that depression is a reoccurring event in Sarton's life becomes clear as one reads through her journals. Passages like the above are scattered throughout the works.

Sarton's journals also illustrate the frustration of having battled a bout of depression only to have another resurgence of emotion come rushing over her. This ebb and flow of depression is found in the later months of Sarton's Journal of a Solitude. After feeling fairly healthy for over a month Sarton writes: “The furies came to the window again two nights ago, and I had a frightful attack of temper, of nerves, of resentment against X, followed by the usual boomerang of acute anxiety. It is frightening to have regressed in this way” (82). This passage is discouraging evidence of the cycle of depression in a woman's life. Even when one believes she has conquered the sadness, she is not completely safe from another episode.

Because Sarton's battle with depression follows a cyclical pattern, the dailiness of the experience may be seen. Several times, Sarton writes of simply enduring the deep stages of her depression. She seems to recognize the bouts are not permanent, but rather can be weathered until happiness is restored. In Journal of a Solitude she writes, “The reasons for depression are not so interesting as the way one handles it, simply to stay alive” (16). Shortly after she adds, “Neurotic depression is so boring because it is repetitive, literally a wheel that turns and turns” (17). As the weeks of depression go on, Sarton observes, “There is nothing to be done but to go ahead with life moment by moment and hour by hour—put out birdseed, tidy the rooms, try to create order and peace around me even if I cannot achieve it inside me” (33).

Finally, this dailiness is articulated in Sarton's discussion of survival: “Is this the key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go” (Journal 34). Sarton's journals depict an understanding and acceptance of the daily process of enduring mental depression. It is perhaps Sarton's acceptance of the cyclical process of depression that provides her with the ability to utilize the journal as a tool to reconstruct happiness.

Sarton writes with enthusiasm as she feels her sense of peace return to her. Often she begins with tentative entries and then as she becomes more confident in her returned happiness she writes with more conviction. In Journal of a Solitude, when Sarton first realizes she may be climbing out of a depression, she hesitantly writes, “I don't know whether the inward work is achieving something, or whether it is simply the autumn light, but I begin to see my way again, which means to resume myself” (35). When the mood has not left her the next day, Sarton suggests with more clarity, “Has it really happened at last, I feel released from the rack, set free, in touch with the deep source that is only good” (37). A few more days after this entry, Sarton writes with confidence, “I can hardly believe that relief from the anguish of these past months is here to stay, but so far it does feel like a true change of mood—or rather, a change of being where I can stand alone” (39).

This series of entries illustrates the writing process Sarton uses to work through her depression and finally to position herself with a new sense of emotional balance. The journals function as a way to test thoughts, fears, and emotions. After an episode of depression, Sarton reflects on the entire experience. For example, at the conclusion of Recovering, Sarton uses one of her final journal entries as a way to put the whole experience into perspective: “I began this journal ten months ago as a way of getting back to my self, of pulling out of last year's depression, and now I am truly on a rising curve. What has changed in a miraculous way is the landscape of the heart, so somber and tormented for over a year that I was not myself” (224).

This type of reflection is also found in The House by the Sea. Although this journal is written during a positive time in Sarton's life, she does spend time looking back on the sadness she experienced while writing Journal of a Solitude. Through this reflection, Sarton is better able to appreciate the happiness she has reconstructed. She writes, “I come back to happiness here. I have never been so happy in my life, never for such a sustained period, for I have been in this house by the sea for a year and a half. I have not said enough about what it is to wake each day to the sunrise and to that great tranquil open space” (61). Such entries allow Sarton to reflect on the experience she has been through and ultimately value the life she leads every day.

When reading texts written by women, it is important to consider the “whole range of material conditions that have historically determined female subjectivity” (Costello 125). This is particularly true in understanding female depression. Attention must be turned to the social factors that make women susceptible to depression. A close reading of women's autobiographical works will provide the insight necessary to understand how daily oppression in a woman's life can lead her to psychological distress.

Analysis of May Sarton's journals has shown how one woman's voicing of her experiences with depression can help to develop a community of resistance against the oppressive environment that contributes to depression. When asked about her influence on her readers, May Sarton responded, “I've had many letters from people … who said, ‘You've helped me to be able to understand myself and to not feel awful or rotten or wicked,’ so there I think I've had value” (Carter 77). As one of the most prolific writers of the past several decades, May Sarton has much to offer, not the least of which is her individual voice. A voice inspiring in its honesty, challenging us to draw together as a community to better understand and manage experiences with depression.

Note

A version of this paper was presented at the 1996 Western States Communication Association Annual Conference, Pasadena, CA.

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