The Education of Harriet Hatfield by May Sarton (1989)

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From the 1989 W.W. Norton edition of The Education of Harriet Hatfield by May Sarton: In this novel by Mary Sarton, Harriet Hatfield at sixty begins a new adventure. Her friend of thirty years has died and left her enough money to fund her dream of running a women’s bookstore. But when Hatfield House: A Bookstore for Women opens in a blue-collar neighborhood near Boston, Harriet is bombarded by anonymous threats, and obscenities are written on the windows.

Then a Boston Globe reporter headlines her interview, “Lesbian Bookstore Owner Threatened” and the education of Harriet begins. Never before has she thought of herself as a member of a persecuted minority.

Now she has “come out,” and doors begin to open in every direction for this innocent abroad who has become a target for some and a heroine for others. At the end, Harriet stands undismayed in the door she herself has opened into the disturbing world of homophobia.

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