May Sarton on women who need to create works of art

    She said this:

The crucial question seems to me to be this: what is the source of creativity in the woman who wants to be an artist? After all, admit it, a woman is meant to create children, not works of art. . . . A man with a talent does what is expected of him, makes his way, constructs, is an engineer, a composer, a builder of bridges. It’s the natural order of things that he construct objects outside himself and his family. The woman who does so is aberrant. . . . Maybe it’s this: the woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need: in the artist it is mandatory. Unable to fulfill it, he goes mad. But when the artist is a woman she fulfills it at the expense of herself as a woman.

    (Quoted from page 261 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg.)
    For a brief biography of May Sarton, click here. For images of or relating to May Sarton, click here.