Analysis of May Sarton’s As We Are Now

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on August 10, 2025

In World of Light, a 1979 documentary featuring May Sarton, the author frankly discusses many pressing concerns: attitudes toward the aged in the United States, being true to oneself, writing as self-realization, passionate relationships between women (sexual or otherwise), and the overarching importance of love. Not surprisingly, many of these themes emerge in her novels, poems, and memoirs.

One of her most important novels, As We Are Now (1973), set in a Dickensian nursing home in New Hampshire, touches on all these issues, as well as others important to the writer, such as the comfort provided by animals. The jacket copy of the first edition of As We Are Now calls the book “This short swift blow of a novel.”

The narrative is somewhat loosely based on the experience of a male friend, Perley Cole, about whom Sarton wrote several poems and essays. A farmer who worked with a scythe and had an angry and poetic soul, Perley died in an ambulance en route to the hospital.

In As We Are Now, the protagonist is Caro Spencer, 76 and never married. After her brother and his younger wife can no longer care for her, Caro is put into a rural nursing facility, Twin Elms Nursing Home, only to discover that she is a prisoner—treated rudely and not able to continue to be herself. She labels the home “a concentration camp for the old.” Cut off from all that is important to her, she is humiliated at every turn. She even believes they put tranquilizers in the coffee.

The only signs of life around the place are some noisy geese and a sweet cat named Pansy. Like Sarton, Caro keeps a journal, which she calls “The Book of the Dead.” She looks at the end of life as a journey and intends to keep notes. She also knows that writing about one’s life is a way of holding on to sanity. “If I can draw it accurately, I shall know where I am,” writes Caro.

Sarton looked forward to being old. She had several older mentors. One in particular, the Belgian poet Jean Dominique, taught her to memorize, love, and write poetry. When she went to England, she was introduced to Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf, and Julian and Juliette Huxley. Many of her everyday friends and lovers were older; she always respected the life experience and admired the grace and wisdom attained at “a certain age.”

In World of Light, Sarton admitted that finally, at 67, she is content “not to write a book a year.” She enjoyed the slowed-down pace, knowing herself better. Yet Sarton did continue to produce almost a book a year. At her death in 1995, she had published more than 50 books of prose and poetry. She also had finally acquired enough money to be treated well wherever she ended her days. Not all elderly are so fortunate.

In As We Are Now, Caro Spencer, a retired schoolteacher, is decidedly not. Only one person Caro meets during her “incarceration” gives her anything close to affection and kind treatment. Anna Close is an aide who fills in while the owners are away for two weeks. Anna’s and Caro’s friendship is instant and passionate; Caro feels a renewed spark of life when Anna is there.

Critic Jane S. Bakerman writes, “One of her [Sarton’s] most brilliant achievements is her ability to picture friendship as a redeeming, sustaining force, and she is one of very few American writers to present a vivid picture of the importance and nourishment of friendships between women.”

But the owners, of course, come back, ill tempers and cruelty intact, and Anna, a married woman, cannot take Caro to live at her home. When Caro writes an intense letter of affection to Anna, the owners confiscate it, call her a “queer,” and threaten to send her to the state hospital if she is not a “good” girl.

The novel ends brilliantly as Caro takes revenge on those who have abused her and denied her kindness. In a final grand act of heroism, she burns down the Twin Elms Nursing Home. In an afterword, the reader learns that Caro’s much-loved journal was found and published, with her brother’s permission—hence this work.

As We Are Now remains one of Sarton’s best novels, along with Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, A Reckoning, Kinds of Love, The Small Room, and Birth of a Grandfather. Most of her work, including this novella, is still in print. All of Sarton’s novels were passionately written, the way she lived her life, but these particular volumes were perhaps the most brave.

Sarton wrote novels to find out where she stood; she tackled issues many writers in the mid- to late-20th century wouldn’t have dared discuss. Sarton’s work has changed many people’s lives. One of her favorite awards was one received for Ministry to Women, awarded by the Unitarian Universalist Society.

The novels As We Are Now and A Reckoning, and After the Stroke, a journal, continue to be used in medical schools and hospice classes.

Sources
Sarton, May. As We Are Now, 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973.
World of Light: A Portrait of May Sarton. New York: Ishtar Films, 1979. 30-minute documentary film.
Bakerman, Jane S. “Patterns of Love and Friendship: Five Novels by May Sarton.” In May Sarton, Woman and Poet, edited by Constance Hunting. Orono: National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine at Orono, 1982.