On Old Ladies
I'd like to take a moment in between Persephone books to talk about old ladies.
Why?
Because nobody talks about old ladies, that's why, and unless I'm completely off base about the demographics of the readers of my domestic fiction blog I think it's a safe bet that most of us are hoping to make it to old ladyhood one day, if we're not already there, because it beats the hell out of the alternative. (Gentlemen, thank you for your support.)
For the past few years I've been participating in the Book Riot Read Harder challenges (as well as a reading challenge I pioneered at the liberry) to broaden my reading horizons and hone my readers' advisory skills. I highly recommend it, and personally, I recommend that you not double dip and that you do read in the intent of the challenge instead of trying to find something that technically fulfills the letter of a prompt without actually getting out of your comfort zone.
This year's prompts are mostly within a range of things I normally read, so I figured I was set (except for "an assigned book you hated or never finished" because that means I gotta either read The Scarlet Letter or Walden and I AM NOT READING WALDEN.) The one I did not expect to be difficult at all? "A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60".
HA.
Y'all, they do not write books about old ladies. They write books about old men, sure. They write books where an old lady is the framing mechanism, but that's cheating because the story is about the same person as a younger more fuckable woman. They write books about large casts of characters, one of whom may be an old woman, which is nice but not what I'm looking for. They sometimes even write books about young women who are cursed into looking like or temporarily being old women, but that is also cheating.
I found a list of "books with older female protagonists". I don't know who the hell put this list together but these older female protagonists started at thirty so I have to assume it was Jane Austen. THIRTY. Good lord, I'm evidently eight years into senescence; I suppose at least I look good to be so decrepit but honestly yesterday my hip was hurting like whoa after I went on a hike so maybe I shouldn't be so quick to talk.
Exception: cozy mysteries, like the kind where the detective may possibly be a cat or there are also recipes. And Miss Marple. Please understand that if you love cosy mysteries that is awesome and I support you and also like to knit and drink tea, but they're just not my thing in general. Somebody send me the absolute best cozy and I'll give it a shot, but I don't tend to pick them up.
I looked through a lot of lists and came up with so few titles that I'm now on a mission to read as many books about old ladies as I can. Why wouldn't you write about old ladies? I have the queasy suspicion that it's because male authors and publishers don't want to fuck them. That's it, isn't it.
Well guess what. If women become invisible to you when you turn thirty, they don't want to fuck you either.
Oh, did you know women don't necessarily stop having sex when their hair turns gray? Does that bother you?
Mmmhmm.
I have not, by the way, yet found a book about a woman over 60 enjoying her sexuality that isn't seen through the male gaze. One day I'll tell you about the long car trip with my mother that we both spent staring straight ahead while an audiobook told us all about Noted Stud Stone Barrington's bearskin rug sexcapades. I'll grant that at least some of those women may have been over 60, but let's just say that it was not told from the women's perspective. I am not kidding about the bearskin rug. Stuart Woods, you have a lot to answer for.
So here are the titles I've read while searching - to nobody's great astonishment, I have yet to read a book that's truly about an old woman written by a man.
Frangipani House, by Beryl Gilroy - Unfortunately out of print. This is the story of a matriarch in Guyana who is sent by her children to live in a care facility. Mama King is a fiercely independent woman who raised both children and grandchildren and now is being "taken care of" by her family who send money from America. I gather that this is frequently assigned to British schoolchildren; I can't imagine they like it much. You really need to be a bit older to appreciate a book like this. The depiction of old age is clear-eyed and unsentimental; anybody who has seen an older family member's life get so much smaller when they get older and can no longer care for themselves will find it an emotional read. I liked it quite a bit but for some reason found it a slow read. I ended up actually counting it for Book Riot as "a book of colonial or postcolonial literature" because I knew I'd be reading more books about older women, and so much of this one was affected by Guyana's legacy of colonialism.
Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival, by Velma Wallis - this is a retelling of an Athabascan legend about two elderly women left behind by their tribe when food becomes short. This was a real delight. Of course the women eventually prove quite capable of survival, but a lot of what's great about the book is its understanding of aging bodies and relationships. It's not a complicated story, nor is it full of surprises, but I really enjoyed it. I'm also trying to read more indigenous stories and indigenous authors - I read The Birchbark House as well this year and found it delightful.
Remnant Population, by Elizabeth Moon: this is my favorite Old Lady Book to date. Ofelia has lived in a remote space colony for her entire adult life. Suddenly, the colonists are recalled - the colony has proven unprofitable and lost its charter. Ofelia decides she doesn't want to go, so she hides out and begins living on her own solitary terms... and finds she isn't alone after all. This book is so good. Ofelia is a wonderful character, imperfect and realistic yet profoundly appealing. It's about class, age, economic and social exploitation of both a colonized space and the colonists themselves, gender, empowerment through solitude, and of course first contact. The aliens are satisfyingly alien. The humans are satisfyingly awful. This book is an absolute delight and you need to go read it.
Bingo Love, written by Tee Franklin, art by Jenn St-Onge: a graphic novel that's alllllmost cheating because a large portion is told in flashback, but the important decisions of the book are made by the protagonist as a grandmother so I'll count it. It's a lovely story about women of color rediscovering their lost love for one another after being parted as teenagers. The art is fantastic and how great is it to find a book about old! lesbians! of color! my god I think Pat Robertson died a little bit inside and that makes me profoundly happy. I honestly thought the writing was weak, though.
So that's it. I've been deliberately reading these books for the past several months, although obviously I've been reading a lot of other stuff too, and I've managed to read four books. Four. I have read 78 books so far this year. I've got a few more on Mount To Be Read: scanning the Book Riot suggestion list I'd like to read The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, An Unneccesary Woman, and maybe The Night Guest. I note that even their list seems to have at least one of those have it both ways "framing story" old lady books a la Titanic. Is that a movie about an old woman? No it is not.
As for me, I'm only 38, which means that I'm young compared to Ms. Daisy and old compared to all these kids I don't recognize who win the Grammys these days. I'm at an age where I've begun to fall off the map (I believe the MRA nightmare boys place "the wall" at 30?) And let me tell you, oncoming hag-dom is, honestly, pretty great. I haven't been propositioned by a library patron in a few years. I don't give a shit anymore. I care how I look inasmuch as I want to like the way I look, and I'd like my husband to like it too, but I don't give a rat's ass about anybody else's opinion. My three year old thinks my hair is pretty and that's all I need. I haven't shaved my legs or my armpits since the election and I have no intention of starting up again. I've started dressing like a lumberjack who won a package vacation and it's great. Nobody has seen my underpants accidentally when I have to crawl under a table to fix something since I started wearing jeans every day to work, but it don't matter because I get my underpants from Tomboy X now and it turns out that women's underwear that's made like men's underwear is awesome. You know what don't ride up? Boxer briefs, that's what. I got nerdy tattoos on my forearms that everybody can see every day and I bet there are a lot of people who think they're unattractive and not very ladylike, and I don't care!
I'm not looking forward to aches and pains - I've already gotten to the age where you realize that some things just stay wrong with you - and sure, there's a lot of bad coming down the pike as you get older. But there's a lot of good too, and most of it has to do with women aging out of visible personhood in our society. If they look right through you, you can do whatever makes you happy. I won't get served first at the bar, but hell, did I ever?
So tell me - books about old ladies. Which are your favorite? If you over whatever age you consider "old", do you think any of these books are relevant to your experience in life? Are you mad because I say "fuck" a lot? I will, I am certain, continue to swear like a sailor when I grow old. But can you please explain why women over 75 or so go crazy if a baby isn't wearing socks? And which cozy mystery do you think I should read?
Why?
Because nobody talks about old ladies, that's why, and unless I'm completely off base about the demographics of the readers of my domestic fiction blog I think it's a safe bet that most of us are hoping to make it to old ladyhood one day, if we're not already there, because it beats the hell out of the alternative. (Gentlemen, thank you for your support.)
For the past few years I've been participating in the Book Riot Read Harder challenges (as well as a reading challenge I pioneered at the liberry) to broaden my reading horizons and hone my readers' advisory skills. I highly recommend it, and personally, I recommend that you not double dip and that you do read in the intent of the challenge instead of trying to find something that technically fulfills the letter of a prompt without actually getting out of your comfort zone.
This year's prompts are mostly within a range of things I normally read, so I figured I was set (except for "an assigned book you hated or never finished" because that means I gotta either read The Scarlet Letter or Walden and I AM NOT READING WALDEN.) The one I did not expect to be difficult at all? "A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60".
HA.
Y'all, they do not write books about old ladies. They write books about old men, sure. They write books where an old lady is the framing mechanism, but that's cheating because the story is about the same person as a younger more fuckable woman. They write books about large casts of characters, one of whom may be an old woman, which is nice but not what I'm looking for. They sometimes even write books about young women who are cursed into looking like or temporarily being old women, but that is also cheating.
I found a list of "books with older female protagonists". I don't know who the hell put this list together but these older female protagonists started at thirty so I have to assume it was Jane Austen. THIRTY. Good lord, I'm evidently eight years into senescence; I suppose at least I look good to be so decrepit but honestly yesterday my hip was hurting like whoa after I went on a hike so maybe I shouldn't be so quick to talk.
Exception: cozy mysteries, like the kind where the detective may possibly be a cat or there are also recipes. And Miss Marple. Please understand that if you love cosy mysteries that is awesome and I support you and also like to knit and drink tea, but they're just not my thing in general. Somebody send me the absolute best cozy and I'll give it a shot, but I don't tend to pick them up.
How many people will this woman kill before the people of this tiny Maine town come to their senses?!
I looked through a lot of lists and came up with so few titles that I'm now on a mission to read as many books about old ladies as I can. Why wouldn't you write about old ladies? I have the queasy suspicion that it's because male authors and publishers don't want to fuck them. That's it, isn't it.
Well guess what. If women become invisible to you when you turn thirty, they don't want to fuck you either.
Oh, did you know women don't necessarily stop having sex when their hair turns gray? Does that bother you?
Mmmhmm.
I have not, by the way, yet found a book about a woman over 60 enjoying her sexuality that isn't seen through the male gaze. One day I'll tell you about the long car trip with my mother that we both spent staring straight ahead while an audiobook told us all about Noted Stud Stone Barrington's bearskin rug sexcapades. I'll grant that at least some of those women may have been over 60, but let's just say that it was not told from the women's perspective. I am not kidding about the bearskin rug. Stuart Woods, you have a lot to answer for.
So here are the titles I've read while searching - to nobody's great astonishment, I have yet to read a book that's truly about an old woman written by a man.
Frangipani House, by Beryl Gilroy - Unfortunately out of print. This is the story of a matriarch in Guyana who is sent by her children to live in a care facility. Mama King is a fiercely independent woman who raised both children and grandchildren and now is being "taken care of" by her family who send money from America. I gather that this is frequently assigned to British schoolchildren; I can't imagine they like it much. You really need to be a bit older to appreciate a book like this. The depiction of old age is clear-eyed and unsentimental; anybody who has seen an older family member's life get so much smaller when they get older and can no longer care for themselves will find it an emotional read. I liked it quite a bit but for some reason found it a slow read. I ended up actually counting it for Book Riot as "a book of colonial or postcolonial literature" because I knew I'd be reading more books about older women, and so much of this one was affected by Guyana's legacy of colonialism.
Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival, by Velma Wallis - this is a retelling of an Athabascan legend about two elderly women left behind by their tribe when food becomes short. This was a real delight. Of course the women eventually prove quite capable of survival, but a lot of what's great about the book is its understanding of aging bodies and relationships. It's not a complicated story, nor is it full of surprises, but I really enjoyed it. I'm also trying to read more indigenous stories and indigenous authors - I read The Birchbark House as well this year and found it delightful.
Remnant Population, by Elizabeth Moon: this is my favorite Old Lady Book to date. Ofelia has lived in a remote space colony for her entire adult life. Suddenly, the colonists are recalled - the colony has proven unprofitable and lost its charter. Ofelia decides she doesn't want to go, so she hides out and begins living on her own solitary terms... and finds she isn't alone after all. This book is so good. Ofelia is a wonderful character, imperfect and realistic yet profoundly appealing. It's about class, age, economic and social exploitation of both a colonized space and the colonists themselves, gender, empowerment through solitude, and of course first contact. The aliens are satisfyingly alien. The humans are satisfyingly awful. This book is an absolute delight and you need to go read it.
Bingo Love, written by Tee Franklin, art by Jenn St-Onge: a graphic novel that's alllllmost cheating because a large portion is told in flashback, but the important decisions of the book are made by the protagonist as a grandmother so I'll count it. It's a lovely story about women of color rediscovering their lost love for one another after being parted as teenagers. The art is fantastic and how great is it to find a book about old! lesbians! of color! my god I think Pat Robertson died a little bit inside and that makes me profoundly happy. I honestly thought the writing was weak, though.
So that's it. I've been deliberately reading these books for the past several months, although obviously I've been reading a lot of other stuff too, and I've managed to read four books. Four. I have read 78 books so far this year. I've got a few more on Mount To Be Read: scanning the Book Riot suggestion list I'd like to read The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, An Unneccesary Woman, and maybe The Night Guest. I note that even their list seems to have at least one of those have it both ways "framing story" old lady books a la Titanic. Is that a movie about an old woman? No it is not.
As for me, I'm only 38, which means that I'm young compared to Ms. Daisy and old compared to all these kids I don't recognize who win the Grammys these days. I'm at an age where I've begun to fall off the map (I believe the MRA nightmare boys place "the wall" at 30?) And let me tell you, oncoming hag-dom is, honestly, pretty great. I haven't been propositioned by a library patron in a few years. I don't give a shit anymore. I care how I look inasmuch as I want to like the way I look, and I'd like my husband to like it too, but I don't give a rat's ass about anybody else's opinion. My three year old thinks my hair is pretty and that's all I need. I haven't shaved my legs or my armpits since the election and I have no intention of starting up again. I've started dressing like a lumberjack who won a package vacation and it's great. Nobody has seen my underpants accidentally when I have to crawl under a table to fix something since I started wearing jeans every day to work, but it don't matter because I get my underpants from Tomboy X now and it turns out that women's underwear that's made like men's underwear is awesome. You know what don't ride up? Boxer briefs, that's what. I got nerdy tattoos on my forearms that everybody can see every day and I bet there are a lot of people who think they're unattractive and not very ladylike, and I don't care!
I'm not looking forward to aches and pains - I've already gotten to the age where you realize that some things just stay wrong with you - and sure, there's a lot of bad coming down the pike as you get older. But there's a lot of good too, and most of it has to do with women aging out of visible personhood in our society. If they look right through you, you can do whatever makes you happy. I won't get served first at the bar, but hell, did I ever?
So tell me - books about old ladies. Which are your favorite? If you over whatever age you consider "old", do you think any of these books are relevant to your experience in life? Are you mad because I say "fuck" a lot? I will, I am certain, continue to swear like a sailor when I grow old. But can you please explain why women over 75 or so go crazy if a baby isn't wearing socks? And which cozy mystery do you think I should read?
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