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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2022

Andrew King
Affiliation:
University of Surrey
Kathryn Almack
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire
Rebecca L. Jones
Affiliation:
The Open University
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Summary

The chapters in this second section focus on representations of ageing, gender and sexuality. Representations matter because they shape discursive possibilities: what can be imagined and what actions seem possible and viable. All the chapters in this section draw on textual sources. In their chapters, Elizabeth Barry and Maricel Oró Piqueras draw on texts from English literature by authors such as Virginia Woolf, Penelope Lively, Angela Carter and Doris Lessing, while Kinneret Lahad and Karen Hvidtfeldt draw on material from online web columns and magazine articles.

In Chapter Five, Elizabeth Barry employs a reading of Virginia Woolf 's Mrs Dalloway as a lens to think about cultural and scientific representations of the menopause. She responds particularly to Germaine Greer's criticisms of Simone de Beauvoir's representations of the menopause. Greer argues that de Beauvoir's characterisation of the menopause as a time of loss of agency and weakness demonstrated a sexual double standard. However, Barry argues that in making this critique, Greer herself draws on pathologising understandings of the menopause and of the sexuality of older women. Barry suggest that, while not always sympathetic towards the experiences of other women experiencing the menopause, Woolf 's Mrs Dallowayultimately offers scope for a more nuanced and complicated understanding of this underrepresented aspect of older women's lives. Barry thus demonstrates that literature offers resources for new ways to imagine menopause and later life sexuality.

Maricel Oró Piqueras too uses literature to explore the intersection of ageing, sexuality and gender. In Chapter Six she takes an interdisciplinary approach, starting with social scientific studies of the common discursive resources for talking about older women's sexuality (a dichotomy between ‘asexual’ and ‘sexy oldie’). Oró Piqueras then examines three contemporary British stories that focus on the sexual experiences of women in their seventies and eighties, asking whether they offer new ways of thinking about later-life sex. She demonstrates that these stories do indeed offer resources for new ways of imagining older women's sexuality which are less binary and less heteronormative than common representations.

Kinneret Lahad and Karen Hvidtfeldt also draw on textual sources to explore issues around representations in Chapter Seven, but in everyday texts rather than literary ones.

Type
Chapter
Information
Intersections of Ageing, Gender and Sexualities
Multidisciplinary International Perspectives
, pp. 65 - 66
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Andrew King, University of Surrey, Kathryn Almack, University of Hertfordshire, Rebecca L. Jones, The Open University
  • Book: Intersections of Ageing, Gender and Sexualities
  • Online publication: 27 April 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781447333036.008
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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Andrew King, University of Surrey, Kathryn Almack, University of Hertfordshire, Rebecca L. Jones, The Open University
  • Book: Intersections of Ageing, Gender and Sexualities
  • Online publication: 27 April 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781447333036.008
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by Andrew King, University of Surrey, Kathryn Almack, University of Hertfordshire, Rebecca L. Jones, The Open University
  • Book: Intersections of Ageing, Gender and Sexualities
  • Online publication: 27 April 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781447333036.008
Available formats
×