Longing for Company in Old Age in May Sarton’s Encore  Abstract May Sarton, a well-known female writer in America, by recording the real-life experiences in Encore, shows the readers various aspects of her solitary life, such as friends’ visiting, cleaning up the garden and taking trips. Sarton describes things happened in her later years and shares her inspirations with readers. Along with the growth of the age, on the one hand, Sarton wants to treat the loss of company rationally, but on the other hand, she is afraid of being lonely and sometimes she has negative thoughts when she is in a bad condition. This thesis tends to discuss Sarton’s longing for company in her old life and summarize her ways of coping with her longing without company through a deep analysis of Encore. This paper concludes that May Sarton’s journal offers us a good case for observation of the quality of aging life and the contradiction towards longing for company, appealing to both young and old people to look for company and try to deal with their depression when they are in detachment, which is also the practical meaning of the researches on Sarton’s works.

Keywords: May Sarton; longing for company; solitude; Old Life; Aging

梅·萨藤《返场》中在老年对陪伴的渴望

摘  要梅•萨藤，美国知名的女性作家。通过她的日记《返场》来记录真实的生活经历，她向读者们展示了自己独居生活的各个方面，如朋友拜访，收拾花园，出行旅游等。日记《返场》详细讲述了萨藤在晚年时期的所见所闻及生活感触，随着年龄的增长，作者一方面希望理性对待陪伴的缺失，另一方面又害怕孤身一人，在不如意时甚至会产生消极思想，自怨自艾。而本文则是要通过分析她在日记中写下晚年对陪伴的渴望，以及在无人陪伴时处理她内心的渴望的方式。本文通过观察高质量老年生活以及处理渴望陪伴时的矛盾心理，为年轻人和其他老年人积极寻求陪伴，以从容，坦然的心态面对年老和孤独，而这也是研究萨藤作品的实际意义。71265

毕业论文关键词： 梅.萨藤； 渴望陪伴；孤独； 老年生活；衰老

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Brief Introduction about May Sarton and Encore 1

1.2 Literature review 2

2. Company in Old Age 5

2.1 The Definition of Company 5

2.2 The Relation between “Longing for Company” and “Aging” 5

3. Longing for Company in Sarton’s Old Life 8

3.1 Friends’ Company in Sarton's Old Age 8

3.2 Sarton’s Outing and Her Longing 9

3.3 Sarton’s Longing When No Visit to Her 11

4 . Sarton’s Mentality towards Company 12

4.1 Changes of Sarton’s Attitude towards Company 12

4.2 Coping with the Aging Solitude 13

5. Conclusion 16

References 17

1. Introduction

1.1 Brief Introduction about May Sarton and Encore

May Sarton, born in Wondelgem, Belgium in 1912, is an American poet, novelist and memoirist, who is the pseudonym of Eleanore Marie Sarton. In 1916, her family moved to the United States and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Sarton obtained her early education. In addition, May Sarton is a prolific writer during her writing career of more than sixty years. Apart from her abundant novels and poems, Sarton's most well-known and most permanent work probably lies in her journals and memoirs, particularly Plant Dreaming Deep (about her early years at Nelson, 1968), Journal of a Solitude (1973, often considered her best), The House by the Sea (1976), Recovering (1979) and Encore(1993). In her rambling and honest accounts of her solitary life, she copes with and makes self-reflections on many issues, such as aging, friendship, love and marriage, isolation, writing, planting, gratitude for life’s simple things, fear of dying…