Aging in Literary Works

Autobiography

The unfolding of one’s identity through time is often expressed in old age in the form of autobiography. May Sarton’s poetry and extensive journals exemplify the qualities of introspection, creativity, and self-awareness available in old age. In her poem “Gestalt at Sixty,” she charts the patterns of her existence that have contributed to her development. In “On a Winter Night,” she meditates on the aging process and finds images of clarity, growth, seasoning, and regeneration to overcome the anxieties and tensions of old age. Sarton’s journals are a record of her aging and her struggle to resolve tensions between her need for solitude and her obligations to society as a writer. Representative works include Journal of a Solitude (1973), At Seventy (1984), and After the Stroke (1988). Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-ninth Year (1992) summarizes the indignities of chronic illness, frailty, loneliness, loss, and recurring bouts of depression that dominate her old age. She feels a loss of identity—she feels that the Sarton people have known has become a stranger, someone who is ill and frail. Her next journal, Encore (1993), shows her rejuvenated and restored to her former strength as she engages life.

Other significant autobiographical works include Alan Olmstead’s Threshold: The First Days of Retirement (1975), Elizabeth Gray Vining’s Being Seventy: The Measure of a Year (1978), and Florida Scott-Maxwell’s The Measure of My Days (1968). The former texts emphasize the pitfalls, pleasures, and eventual fulfillment experienced in retirement. Scott-Maxwell explores issues of aging and identity with subtlety and depth. She maintains that the task of old age is to add to and clarify one’s sense of self, whatever the cost.

Life in Review

Older adults find meaning in their lives and gain insights into their identities through the processes of reminiscence and life review. Identity in old age is forged through self-reflection, memory, and integration. Such concerns may be addressed by older adults in autobiographical works, as noted above. Similar concerns may be addressed as well in fictional works. In some cases elderly characters fail to complete a life review that provides a sense of perspective. For example, the old woman in Katherine Anne Porter’s story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” rehashes on her deathbed the awful events that led to her life of isolation and loneliness. She dies with the effects of her early loss unresolved in her memory. Willy Loman’s life review, in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman (1949), leads to a stripping-away of the lies that have been the basis of his character and identity. He is exposed as lonely, vulnerable, and a dreamer. He dies without resolving important personal and family conflicts.

Other characters in fiction use life review to gain insights into their identities. The retired literary agent in Wallace Stegner’s novel The Spectator Bird (1976) faces feelings of guilt over the death of his adult son and uncertainties over an unresolved relationship with a woman he met on a trip twenty years earlier. He exorcises these demons from the past only by confronting his memories and remaining receptive to his supportive and loving wife. Similar ghosts from the past haunt Hagar Shipley, in Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel (1964). At ninety, Hagar maintains a grudge against God because her favorite son died in a tragic accident. By confronting her past, Hagar begins to learn that her unforgiving character, and her inability to acknowledge the love of key people in her life, have kept her alienated and isolated. A similar movement toward integration through life review is experienced by Eva, the main character in Tillie Olsen’s novella Tell Me a Riddle (1976). Eva has lived for others her entire married life. When her husband wishes to move to an old folks’ home, she rebels. As the conflict between husband and wife emerges in the story, Eva begins to reminisce and relive her turbulent childhood in Russia and her mentoring by a woman who was a political activist.

Mentors

Old people often are portrayed as mentors in literary works. The basis of their identity is their capacity to pass on truths and inspire the young. Examples include the novels Set for Life (1991), by Judith Freeman, and Balancing Acts (1981), by Lynn Sharon Schwartz. In Lisa Koger’s story “Ollie’s Gate,” a young woman finds love and wisdom in a neighbor woman once disgraced for having an illegitimate child.

The tensions inherent in intergenerational relationships are vividly re-created in many works. Two examples are Daniel Menaker’s collection of stories, Old Left (1987) and Ernest Thompson’s play On Golden Pond (1979). In the first example a young man spends years resisting the influence of his uncle, an irascible old man who has never lost his appetite for radicalism. After years of caregiving the nephew begins to yield to the old man’s influence over his life. In Thompson’s play an old man works out a lifelong tension with his adult daughter when she arrives for a visit to her parents’ New Hampshire cabin.

The identity of African American elders is often based on relationships within the family. Commitment to family and to traditions is a recurring role in fictional portrayals. For example, Peter Taylor’s story “What You Hear from ’Em?” is about an illiterate old woman, Aunt Munsie, who lives in a small Tennessee town and raises two white children after their mother dies. Aunt Munsie lives in hope that the boys she has raised, successful businessmen in Nashville, will return to live in the small town. Her loss of a well-defined role represents the tragedy of being cast aside for the sake of progress and social conformity.

Alice Walker’s story “To Hell with Dying” portrays a town’s response to a similar character, a man named Mr. Sweet, who relies on neighbor children to rejuvenate him when he seems near death. The narrator recalls the importance of this man to her personal development. The central role of spiritual life to the identity of African American elders is expressed in the Allan Gurganus novella, Blessed Assurance (1990). In this story an African American woman becomes an unlikely mentor to a white teenager, who sells funeral insurance one summer to poor black people in rural North Carolina. The old woman is ninety-four, nearly blind, and a devoted Christian. Her goodness and spirituality overwhelm the young man and provide him with new perspectives on wisdom and old age.

Ernest J. Gaines ’s novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) is structured as an oral history of a former slave who has lived more than one hundred years and has witnessed the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement in the South. Miss Jane’s tenacity of character, her faith in the land, and her dedication to her loved ones are the essential traits of her identity. Her story offers painful testimony to the injustices inflicted upon African American people throughout American history. This story illustrates the importance of African American family life and reveals the quality of perseverance that is essential to Miss Jane’s character.

African American culture and Jewish ethnicity collide in the play Driving Miss Daisy (1988) by Alfred Uhry. In this play Daisy Werthan, in her seventies, gradually mellows under the firm and loving hand of Hoke Coleburn, twenty years her junior, an itinerant laborer hired as a chauffeur. The two grow old together and become the closest of friends, despite the differences in race and class. A devout Jew is the focus of Max Apple’s novel Roommates: My Grandfather’s Story (1994). In his memoir, Patrimony: A True Story (1991), Philip Roth gains insights into his inheritance of the familial, cultural, and religious qualities that characterized his father. In doing so, he realizes how much his father’s Jewish heritage means to his own identity and values.

Frailty

Sometimes old people are stereotyped as always being frail, ill, or disabled. These physical conditions do have a serious impact on how the elderly regard themselves. They are not, however, the final determinant of one’s identity in old age. For instance, Tracy Kidder’s Old Friends (1993) is a study of life in a nursing home. The two men Kidder profiles continue to sustain meaningful lives despite the limitations of blindness and the effects of a stroke. Mark Van Doren’s poem “The First Snow of the Year” tells of an elderly couple maintaining their affection for each other, and recovering memories of their youthful love, despite the husband’s increasing frailty.

Sometimes the effects of a particular disease seem to overwhelm one’s identity and hope for a normal life in old age. Memoirs are often the chosen medium for depicting the ravaging effects of Alzheimer’s disease on the victim as well as on the family. Rosalie Walsh Honel’s Journey with Grandpa: Our Family’s Struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease (1988) and Carol Wolfe Konek’s Daddyboy (1991) are two examples. Richard G. Stern’s story “Dr. Cahn’s Visit” illustrates a son’s dedication to affirm the identities of his parents despite his mother’s wasting away from cancer and his father’s dementia.

Loss, Grief, Death

Understanding the complexity of identity in old age requires an examination of literary works about the end of life. Key works include Linda Pastan’s poems in The Five Stages of Grief (1978) and Mary Jane Moffat’s anthology of stories and poems, In the Midst of Winter: Selections from the Literature of Mourning (1982).

Robert Anderson’s play I Never Sang for My Father (1968) portrays a middle-aged son’s fruitless attempts to find the perfect image or ideal of father. Eventually he acknowledges his father’s identity as a bitter, unforgiving old man. Two poems, William Carlos Williams’ “The Last Words of My English Grandmother,” and Robert Frost’s “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” portray contrasting responses to the end of life. In the first poem an irascible old woman ends life raging against what she considers to be life’s inequities. In the second poem an old man, living alone in a remote farmhouse, acknowledges the uneasy balance that must be struck so that the old can sustain themselves in their own homes.

Summary

Identities of aging in literature reflect the delicate balancing acts faced in old age. Older adults strive to remain active, healthy, and engaged in life. At the same time they draw upon a rich storehouse of memories, continue to face unresolved conflicts relating to families and other relationships, and are constantly challenged by loss, grief, and death.

Bibliography

Cole, Tom. The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1992. An important contribution to social history, literature, and religious life as they apply to aging.

Rubin, Rhea Joyce. Of a Certain Age: A Guide to Contemporary Fiction Featuring Older Adults. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1990. More than three hundred novels and stories written after 1980 are annotated and indexed according to a variety of subjects.

Shenk, Dena, and W. Andrew Achenbaum. Changing Perceptions of Aging and the Aged. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1994. Essays reflecting upon personal impressions of aging, aging in various cultures, images of women, and images of aging in literary works.

Yahnke, Robert E., and Richard M. Eastman. Literature and Gerontology: A Research Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. More than 340 annotated entries on novels, plays, poems, stories, and autobiographical works. Each entry is cross-referenced to one of forty-four topics in gerontology.