Sally Chivers provides a fascinating look at and challenge to how North American popular culture has portrayed old age as a time of disease, decline, and death. Within contemporary Canadian literary and film production, a tradition of articulate central elderly female characters challenges what the aging body has come to signify in a broader cultural context. Rather than seek positive images of aging, which can do their own prescriptive damage, the author focuses on constructive depictions that provide a basis on which to create new stories and readings of growing old. This type of humanities approach to the study of aging promises neither to fixate on nor avoid consideration of the role of the body in the much broader process of getting older. The progression implied in the title from the solitary symbol of The Old Woman toward a community of older women, indicates not a move toward euphemism, but rather an increasing and necessary awareness of the social and cultural dimensions of aging.

Contents
Preface		Old Age, Literature, and Potential					XX
Introduction	Situating Old Women: Fields of Inquiry				XX
Chapter 1	The Mirror Has Two Faces: Simone de Beauvoir's and
		Margaret Laurence's Ambivalent Representations			XX
Chapter 2	Generation Gaps and the Potential of Grandmotherhood		XX
Chapter 3	"Here, Every Minute Is Ninety Seconds":
		Fictional Perspectives on Nursing Home Care			XXX
Chapter 4	"Living Life Seriatim": Friendship and Interdependence
		 in Late-Life Fiction and Semifiction					XXX
Conclusion										XXX
Notes											XXX
Works Cited										XXX
Index											XXX
 

Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Canadian fiction Women authors History and criticism, Women and literature Canada History 20th century, Canadian fiction 20th century History and criticism, Aged women in literature, Old age in literature