SOURCE: "Through Caverns Measureless to Man: Jean Stafford's 'The Interior Castle,'" in Shenandoah, Vol. 34, No. 4, 1983, pp. 79-95.

In this essay, Leary relates Stafford's personal experiences, particularly her tempestuous relationship with husband Robert Lowell, to the short story "The Interior Castle, " stating the story "may be viewed as a metaphor of Stafford's own battle for survival."

Anyone seeking an appropriate title for a book that would do justice to the more colorful episodes in Jean Stafford's own life might feel compelled to come up with something like "Profiles in Pain," for many of the experiences she endured were as harrowing as those of her suffering characters. But the kind of hyperbolic titles we have had thrust upon us by contemporary writers and their publishers was not to Stafford's taste, whether applied to her literary creations or to herself. Schooled in stoicism, she cultivated an ironic view of life...