Customer Reviews

The Small Room

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Here is another Sarton gem that captures human beings at both their best and most conflicted. The story revolves around a few months in the lives of the professors and students at a small women's college where some fireworks erupt, involving a brilliant student, plagiarism and accusations of favoritism.

The main character and narrator is a young woman named Lucy Winter who has just ended her engagement and is teaching because she can't think of anything else to do. Happily for both Lucy and the reader, her intelligence, caring and gift for teaching quickly propel her to the forefront of the emerging conflict.

The gift of this book is the questions it raises about the process and goals of teaching. How and when to foster and encourage brilliance? What allowances, if any, should be made for extraordinary ability? How to support students without becoming embroiled in their lives? How to get students excited about learning and thinking for themselves? And above all, how much of yourself to give as a teacher? All these questions come and go and come again throughout the book, offering a rich and varied look at what it means to be involved in the process of education.

The problems with this book have to do with the limitations of its characters. They are all in turmoil in one form or another, and their issues seem to be magnified by the fact that they are forever getting together to have a few drinks and talk things out. Their dependency on alcohol and cigarettes in order to loosen up, get to the bottom of what they are feeling, steady their nerves, and exchange confidences with one another is so striking that the modern reader can't help but think addiction. While the use of these two "habits" are clearly stage props in one sense, the need to use them raises questions about how Sarton saw human interaction. It also gives the book a slightly muddled and hazy quality at times.

Despite its limitations, however, this is a book that is well worth reading. Expect no final resolutions to the tough questions she raises, but plenty of satisfying food for thought instead.

This book is not at all boring. It is a beautiful picture of a young woman who goes to teach literature at a small New England woman's college. She goes more because she doesn't have anything else to do, rather than because of any great desire to teach.

Once at the college, though, the main character must deal with series of questions--what is the proper relationship of a teacher to a student, how much of oneself must a teacher share with her students, what moral responsibilities does a teacher have? One of her students is one of the star scholars of the small college, but while she seems to demonstrate real scholarly excellence, she is clearly unhappy. When this student plagiarises an essay, the main character must decide: should she let the rules proceed, and see the girl expelled for cheating, or should she concern herself with the extenuating circumstances of the girl's depression.

This is the kind of book where there are many, many scenes filled with thoughtful conversations, rather than action. I enjoyed these conversations, though, since they all relate to these questions about teaching, learning, the scholarly life, the privileges of excellence, etc.

this book, through its excellent plot and characters, opened up a lot of bigger questions, such as, what do we live for?, why do we strive for excellence?, what is the purpose of learning?, what are relationships about?, what does it mean to be a teacher, a friend, a therapist, a partner?

the fact that this book even pointed toward these questions is seriously in its favor, and for that i gave it four stars. the book, however, had some serious drawbacks.

weak points: often the questions, these vitally important questions, were not asked so clearly, as there was often a shroud of vagueness around them. no surprise, the characters asking these questions almost ALWAYS were drinking, or even drinking heavily, when doing the asking and exploring. they struck me as mostly numb people, and could only access life's seriousness when loosened up by alcohol. even with alcohol as sarton's ally, she never really uses her characters to tackle these questions at any sustained depth, and as such, the deeper answers are only hinted at and lurk in the shadows. for this reason, the book drags on, and often mires in questions of morality. and none of the relationships in the book are really founded on bedrock; even with the couple that fights throughout the book and "makes up" at the end, their reconciliation, presented as permanent, just comes across as temporary, because neither partner has ever really accessed the deepest parts of their beings. their reconciliation, which sarton presents as profound, comes across more as shallow, created for the sake of keeping the reader happy (or numb, in the dark), very hollywood. and while the main character is sympathetic, much of what i find appealing in her is based on her instinct, and not in any increasing consciousness on her part. she stills comes across as an underconfident wet noodle, even by the end of the book, despite the powerful roles she has taken on, or should i say, fallen into.

all this said, the book was tightly written, very believable, and gave me a view into a very realistic world...but a shallow yet pseudo-deep one that i'm not particularly interested in entering...but which i think may sarton still is. i think she feels this world she's created IS in fact deep. sadly, i think it's only as deep as she's capable of going.

May Sarton is not Charlotte Bronte and this is not Lucy Snow in VILLETTE, but Lucy Winter. Appropriately she is a college professor in her first year of teaching. One of the characters explains that every college is a secret society. This one is Appleton, a fictitious women's college located in New England. Clearly one of the leaders of the college is Harriet Summerson, another character name evoking a season.

Lucy thinks that when the girls, the students, arrive, they resemble a flock of starlings in their noisiness. Lucy discovers that knowing something and teaching something are different. She is amazed that teaching requires so much vitality.

Olive Hunt, it seems, is an off-campus power. She often threatens to change her will to delete a substantial bequest to the college. The price of excellence may be eccentricity, maladjustment. She has a relationship with one of the chief participants in a matter of academic misconduct.

First, the staff is faced with the problem of what to do with a brilliant math student who is insisting upon devoting all of her energy to a single math problem. The vote of the faculty is close, but the student is allowed to go her lonely way. Lucy is told by one of the professors that teaching takes the marrow out of the bones. The relationship between teacher and student is complex and ill-defined.

Next Lucy runs into a situation where a prize pupil has committed plagiarism. It is an awful thing for Lucy to contend with in her first yer of teaching. The source used is Simone Weil. Lucy first tells Hallie Summerson of the matter and then speaks to the student, Jane. Jane claims that as a gifted student at the college she is always expected to jump higher, to achieve more and more, and that such expectations are burdensome to her. The professor who has promoted the work of the student most strongly does not want her to have to suffer the consequences for her act, fearing that sanctioning the conduct could derail a promising academic career. She claims that the young are frightfully self-righteous and does not want to have the matter put before the student council.

The attempt to hush things up fails in the sense that every student on campus seems to know about the matter. A student tells Lucy that the faculty is distrusted. There is an implication of favoritism. Lucy invites Jane to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with her and obtains her reluctant consent to consult a psychiatrist. Jane has come to be treated as a pariah by the other students. Lucy is warned by the psychiatrist that things should not be allowed to just slide because Jane is on the verge of a serious breakdown.

Fortunately the president of the college is responsive to Jane's plight and permits her to go into the college infirmary. At the same time, though, the college is buzzing with talk about an editorial appearing in the college newspaper, COLLEGE NOTES. The atmosphere seems to have reached a stage where it is as if students and teachers alike are rats in a cage. At this point Lucy comes to understand that college teaching may be messy business.

In the end the professor seeking to protect Jane has to yield, and does so in a dignified manner. There is an old ham actor in every professor she contends afterward. Excellence is equated with mutiliation because what is given to the students depletes the donors so drastically. Everyone survives, strengthened by the various encounters detailed by May Sarton. The story is told tautly and interestingly.

This is one of my favorite May Sarton novels, both for the questions it raises & its revealing, intimate depiction of another time & ethos. But while the time & ethos have changed, the questions are still quite pertinent.

Lucy Winter, a new professor of English at a small New England college for women, is plunged into the intricate community of faculty & local eminences. While civilized & even a bit mannered on the surface, there's a hothouse of emotions & relationships busily at work just below that surface, threatening to break out in painful & often damaging ways. When Lucy discovers that a particularly gifted student has plagiarized work for a paper, everything comes to a furious boil.

What follows is a probing look at what is demanded of human beings in order to attain intellectual excellence -- particularly in young women, whose place in intellectual circles was far more repressed & opposed by social strictures at the time of this novel (1961). While that has thankfully changed for the better, the question of balancing mind & heart, intellect & emotion, professional distance & human contact, remains pressing & unanswered.

Sarton doesn't wrap things up neatly by the final page. While the specific incident is dealt with, the long-term consequences for all involved go unrevealed. The reader is left with a great deal to think about ... which is as it should be in this sort of work.

Some reviewers have questioned the constant smoking & drinking in the novel, even going so far as to call it addictive behavior. I think this is making the mistake of seeing 1961 through 21st century-colored glasses. It was simply the norm at the time, as a quick look at most films & TV shows of that era will reveal. Rather than condemn it by our modern standards -- which will undoubtedly seem just as outdated some 40 years from now -- the reader should appreciate this window into the past, which allows us to experience a very different worldview as it was: unquestioned, unaware, unashamed.

The prose style will strike some as a bit too genteel, a bit removed from the naturalistic, even for that time. They're probably right, as this is a characteristic of Sarton's writing -- she was essentially a European of the early 20th century, despite growing up in America, and that shows in her style. But if you can make the adjustment, you'll find this a rewarding novel. Recommended!

This book was read for a class I took. It has some interesting situations. But the writing is boring and tiresome.