Review of Mrs Stevens Hears The Mermaids Singing by May Sarton

Do you really think it is impossible for a woman and a writer to lead a normal life as a woman?

I live in a small town that I moved to two years ago. I’m not the friendliest person and I work at home, by myself. Some mornings, some afternoons, I fall into the trap of thinking that no one experienced this, that all my struggling with family and motherhood and solitude and attempts at writing are somehow new and unique. It can be a bit of a kick in the gut to have it pointed out the exact opposite: other women have thought about what I think about now. Other women have written their thoughts down on it. I’m hardly alone; I just have to reach out.

So we have Mrs Stevens Hears The Mermaids Singing. During an interview, an author reflects on her books, her life, her loves (male and female), the Muse (female). She reflects on the difference between solitude (a good thing) and loneliness (a bad one). She befriends a college student smarting from his first gay encounter. It takes place over two days. In one sense, even written in 1965, stands up today. Dateless: authors still write, struggle to find the Muse, get married, break-up, and women still try to have-it-all. In another sense, it’s a book about feminism without the benefit of second-wave feminism, and there’s a datedness in the assumptions of what roles women can play. There’s a datedness in Mrs Stevens’ recollections of her gadabout twenties and thirties, floating around Europe, one would assume wearing trousers and having gin fizzes and charleston dancing. It takes more imagination to relate to that.

The introduction, written by Carolyn G. Heilbrun (who the Internet tells me is an American Feminist Academic), mentions that the writing does not match the depth of the ideas. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been said, but then, once read, that was all I could notice. The novel’s beginning is a cliché: Mrs Stevens waking up and thinking about what she’s going to do that day. Metaphors are obvious. The whole book is plagued with measles or chickenpox or something that makes there be “…”‘s on each page (oh, how I despise ellipses unless they are being used as in a mathematical statement, i.e. $$x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n$$). People talk in a way that never feels natural to me, but I wasn’t alive in the 1960s and maybe that was how upper-class-type people spoke. The dialogue reminded me of watching The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie when I was only six or seven, where, at least to a six year old; there’s that sort of affectation to the speech that distances the viewer/reader. You have to look past that, the introduction suggests. Look past that and see what’s underneath.

And so, what did this book tell me? Can I write while female and still have a normal female life? Mrs Stevens didn’t, but tells one of her interviewers she can try. She can hope. Maybe I can too, provided I “[fight] my war to get to [my] desk before [my] little bundle of energy has been dissipated.”

(This review brought to you while Geoff entertains Tesfa in the basement with Dragon Quest VIII on the PS2, so maybe it’s less impossible to combine all this than it may seem.)

This reissue of Mrs Stevens Hears The Mermaids Singing by May Sarton went on sale July 22nd, 2014, but the book was originally published in 1965.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.