The Magnificent Spinster [Paperback]

May Sarton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1989

Sarton's 17th novel explores the realities and reverberations of a 50-year friendship between two remarkable women that ended with the death of Jane Reid. It is relived because Cam, in her seventies, decides to celebrate "the magnificent spinster" in a novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This fiction of friendship and devotion shows Sarton's narrative skills still strong and healthy in her seventh decade. The title character is Jane Reid, a remarkable American aristocrat. Born to moneyed privilege, the daughter and granddaughter of distinguished New Englanders, and talented and attractive in her own right, she devotes her long life to service and giving. As teacher, philanthropist, and friend, she influences and touches many. She chooses to remain single, but her zest for people assures that she is never alone. We see her through the admiring eyes of former pupil Cam, who calls up scenes from an exemplary life to create a portrait of a memorable presence. Cam's recollections are short on linear narrative but rich in language and imagery. Readers of this gentle novel should find much to savor. Starr E. Smith, Georgetown Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The life story of The Magnificent Spinsier, Jane Reid, is told by Cam, a seventy-year-old retired historian and Jane's friend for fifty years. Born before World War I and raised on an island off the Maine coast, Jane grows up with her extended family - her parents, five sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, close family friends - in a world of rustic white-anglo-saxon-protestant elegance. The children's main excitements center around "escaping the grown-ups," especially their nanny, Snooker: "Jane's world was running off with her sister Alix to pick blueberries, lying for hours in the soft warm grass, filling their baskets, or simply sneaking off to explore, if possible get lost, and frighten themselves with imaginary dangers, and frighten Snooker by being late for lunch." As Jane becomes an adult, her gentle persistence and intelligent strength steer her clear of conventional expectations. She remains single, becomes a well-loved teacher, does what she can for the war-wounded world, and moves easily into the role of family mentor as the elders pass on. Written in lovely and compelling prose, this is a long and spacious novel about a kind of life and love rarely acknowledged. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc (March 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393305600
• ISBN-13: 978-0393305609
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,237,692 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 - July 16, 1995), an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Her parents were science historian George Sarton and his wife, the English artist Mabel Eleanor Elwes. In 1915, her family moved to Boston, Massachusetts. She went to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and started theatre lessons in her late teens. In 1945 she met her partner for the next thirteen years, Judy Matlack, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They separated in 1956, when Sarton's father died and Sarton moved to Nelson, New Hampshire. Honey in the Hive (1988) is about their relationship. Sarton later moved to York, Maine. She died of breast cancer on July 16, 1995. She is buried in Nelson, New Hampshire.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Little Women, November 13, 2004

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Magnificent Spinster: A Novel (Hardcover)

The narrator, Cam Arnold, recalls Jane Reid, a magnificent person. She, now age 70, used to write impassioned poems for Jane Reid. Jane Reid was a seventh grade teacher at Warren School. She was one of five daughters living on an island off the coast of Maine during the summer months. A family of five girls on an island has an enclosed reality. One is reminded of the Alcott family living in Concord, Massachusetts, even living in a communal society at Fruitlands.

Jane met her most significant mentor at Vassar, Frances Thompson. The narrator of the book is in the process of writing the novel, fictionalizing that is to say, the story of her seventh grade teacher. As an experiment, per the Dalton plan, the students were given a month's worth of assignments. Cam rushed through the work and was scolded by Jane for sloppiness. It was a lesson she took to heart.

In the late twenties Jane Reid made a decision to turn down a proposal of marriage and remain at the the Warren School. Miss Reid became a friend to the narrator's mother who taught art at the Warren School. At the time of Jane's mother's death the narrator, Cam, and her mother were invited to the family's island in Maine. The island came to signify shelter and peace. Cam noticed that Jane had a kind of generosity.

Cam felt that the Sacco-Vanzetti case had been a horror. She wanted to go to Vassar to study socialism. Cam was thwarted in her desire to obtain press credentials to cover the war in Spain. In the end Jane sent Cam to Spain. Afterwards Cam stayed at Jane's house at Sudbury, built when Jane was thirty-eight, to overcome the experience of witnessing war's brutality. Some of Cam's hopes, expectations died in that war. It seemed like a playing field in which Russia and Germany ran experiments.

In 1941 Jane Reid was forty-five. Jane's house at Sudbury became a haven for a brother-in-law who suffered a sever heart attack, for her sister who was a widow, and for another sister who had cancer. A friend, teaching with Jane in 1941, thought her rather beaten down and tired.

Cam visits a contemporary of Jane Reid, now ninety, to help her round out her picture. One of the problems facing Cam is that she is an historian, not a novelist. Jane, at age 45, was ready to resign from the Warren School. She was becoming a less effective teacher, and children are cruel. The head of the school, Frances Thompson, was no longer seeking advice from Jane and as a consequence she had lost her nerve. A new head put her in a position doing remedial work with the students and she excelled at the new task.

Jay, a cousin, and Jane worked together on the papers of their ancestor and famous author, Benjamin Trueblood. (Trueblood is a delightful name.) Jane was told by a director of a community center in Cambridge that she was unusual because she never used money as power. Jane dreamed of going to Germany after World War II to serve on the Unitarian Committee. She did manage to learn German in order to help with the reconstruction of the country. She orchestrated stays for family and friends on the island during the summers and died in her early eighties still embracing a zest for life.

The novel is just about perfect.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not magnificent, August 18, 2011

By 

Kim Boykin (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Magnificent Spinster: A Novel (Paperback)

I bought this novel because I have a number of things in common with Jane Reid, the "magnificent spinster": I went to Vassar, I'm a teacher, and I have no children. I was disappointed that almost nothing was said about Reid's time at Vassar, and there wasn't as much about being a teacher as I'd hoped, but I still mostly enjoyed the book.

The story is narrated by a former seventh-grade student of Reid's, now a retired historian, who is writing a novelization of Reid's life so that Reid won't be forgotten.

I asked my Facebook friends if they had any other May Sarton recommendations, and I didn't get a lot of enthusiasm for her novels, though one friend liked Sarton's journals a lot. I ordered one more of her novels anyway, "Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing."

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gentle and passionate, April 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Magnificent Spinster: A Novel (Paperback)

Excellent prose. This was my introduction to May Sarton.
I especially enjoyed the book for what I learned about her.
This is both a gentle and passionate story.