Discourses of ageing in fiction and feminism: the invisible woman (original) (raw)
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The Time of the Change: Menopause's Medicalization and the Gender Politics of Aging
This article discusses the moment in which normative ideas about aging and reproductive embodiment became conceptually linked in the mid-nineteenth century medicalization of menopause. The reading centers on the first English book-length publication on menopause, written by E. J. Tilt in 1857, and Foucault’s concept of the medical gaze. I analyze mechanisms of observing, conceptualizing, and treating the body in relation to time and discuss their function in affirming and reworking social norms of age and gender. In doing so, I highlight the political work implicit in contesting conceptualizations of female reproductive bodies, their age-specific pathologies, and directives of (self-)surveillance employed in discourses surrounding women’s reproductive health. International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 74-98 Published by: University of Toronto Press DOI: 10.2979/intjfemappbio.7.1.74 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/intjfemappbio.7.1.74
Humanities, 2019
In the medical humanities, there has been a growing interest in diagnosing disease in fictional characters, particularly with the idea that characters in Charles Dickens’s novels may be suffering from diseases recognised today. However, an area that deserves greater attention is the representation of women’s ageing as disease in Victorian literature and medical narratives. Even as Victorian doctors were trying to cure age-related illnesses, they continued to employ classical notions of unhealthy female ageing. For all his interest in medical matters, the novelist Charles Dickens wrote about old women in a similar vein. Using close reading to analyse Victorian gerontology alongside Charles Dickens’s novels Dombey and Son (1848) and Great Expectations (1861), this article examines narratives of female ageing as disease. It concludes by pointing to the ways that Victorian gerontology impacts on how we view women’s ageing as ‘diseased’ today.
Female Aging: Between Fiction and Real Life
Journal of Aging, Humanities and the Arts, 2009
Despite the exponential aging of worldwide population, and despite women still living longer than men, prejudicial negative stereotypes and cultural constructs attached to female aging come to the surface time and again in fiction, mirroring real life. This article aims to analyze three contemporary English novels with elderly female characters as their protagonists contrasting their fictionalized experiences with scientific theories developed around the process of female aging.
Discourses on menopause -- Part II: How do women talk about menopause?
Health:, 2008
The aim of this article is to describe which of the different available discourses women relate to as revealed in the way they talk about menopause. We use a discourse analytic approach, which implies that meaning is ascribed to things according to how we talk about them. Twenty-four menopausal women from Denmark were interviewed. They were selected to cover a broad spectrum of Danish women with different menopausal experiences and social background factors. Seven previously identifi ed discourses could be found in the interviews, though to varying degrees from woman to woman. Nearly all women used terms from the biomedical sphere like 'a period of decline and decay', even if they did not necessarily agree with this view. Also the existential discourse permeated most of the interviews, especially when the conversation turned to the ageing process, femininity and self-development. The way the menopause was talked about almost became kaleidoscopic when images speedily changed from the decrepit osteoporotic woman or a woman with lack of vitality and sex-appeal to a healthy and strong woman with control over her body and self. Since many women contact doctors in relation to menopause, and since the way doctors talk about menopause is infl uential, doctors should carefully consider which words and images they use in the counselling. The medical way of perceiving menopause is just one of many, and doctors must be aware that there are other different and partially contradicting discourses at play in society and in the women's universes.
The social construction of menopause as disease: A literature review
2019
Menopause is not only a natural biological aspect of women’s life, but, also, a social construct, mainly due to the contribution of the medical science. The article analyzes, in its first four parts, how this social construction has evolved, starting with the vision of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century medicine, that approached menopause as cause of multiple women’s diseases, continuing with the transformation of menopause, in the middle of the 20th century, in a specific disease (the oestrogen deficiency disease), due to the discovery of the synthetic oestrogen and, later, in a syndrome, and finishing with the potential role of the in-vitro fertilization in reconstructing the image of menopausal woman as “useless body”. The last part of the article aims to capture the main feminist critiques of these types of social construction and to stress out some gaps in the Romanian feminist approaches regarding this topic.
Between the red tent and the red haze : Representations of perimenopause
2005
Perimenopause is a relatively new word in our language. It is found in a variety of texts, from medical literature to popular literature and the Internet. In this thesis, I explore some current representations of perimenopause. To do so, I utilise feminist analyses of representations of premenstrual syndrome and menopause. A feminist theoretical framework guides my methodology and organisation and interpretation of data. My methodology includes an extensive literature review of feminist theorising around premenstrual syndrome and menopause, as well as discourse analysis of textual representations of perimenopause and the use of a reflexive journal as a 'perimenopausal' woman. My analysis reveals four main themes; first, perimenopause is a medically defined condition that needs management; second, perimenopause is confusing and contradictory; third, perimenopause is to be feared; and fourth, perimenopause is a time of rejuvenation. I show that three of these themes are simila...
Poetic and Prosed Responses to Menopause
sentry.rmu.edu
Despite the volume of research about menopause, even research conducted from feminist perspectives, few have investigated the ways in which women write about their experiences with and reactions to menopause. The focus of this paper is to examine how women (re)create their experiences with menopause by using their own words. More specifically, I am interested in discovering the significance of menopause in women's lives as well as how they view the medical community. To conduct this research, I analyze fifteen pieces of poetry and prose collected from contemporary edited volumes focusing on women and/or menopause. First, I discuss the objectives of these writings. Second, I offer a brief cultural history of menopause.
OBM Geriatrics, 2023
Narratives and how women interpret their symptoms have always been a part of how menopause is experienced. Today, as women feel more accessible to talk about menopause, new narratives are being formed and negotiated - both to menopause and concerning women becoming older. These different narratives mirror the fact that the transitional phase differs from woman to woman and that some women experience many symptoms while others do not seem bothered at all. Some narratives underscore menopause as a transformative period, offering opportunities to adapt to new life roles and highlighting middle-aged and older women as individuals of competence, confidence, and experience. Other narratives center on describing bodily symptoms - primarily "classic symptoms," notably hot flushes, but also the broad array of physical and mental manifestations that may arise from one's early forties to late fifties. In this paper, I will, drawing on two decades of research on the topic, discuss...
Special Edition on Gendered and Sexual Aging in the History and Culture of Medicine
Journal of Aging Studies, 2023
This special edition of the Journal of Aging Studies was guest edited by Alison Downham Moore and Sarah Lamb. The five papers in the special edition are: Yiu Tung Suen, A Qualitative Study of Older People Living with HIV in Hong Kong: Resilience through Downward Comparison amidst Limited Social Support: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101079 Maria Concetta Lo Bosco, ‘Bodies that never grow’: How Psychiatric Understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorders Affect Autistic People’s Bodily Experience of Gender, Ageing, and Sexual Desire. : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101101 Branka Bogdan, Vračare : Village wise-women, reproductive health, and Yugoslavia’s early socialist modernisation project https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101084 Catherine Rider, The Medieval Biological Clock? Gendered Reproductive Aging in Medieval Western Medicine. This article has already appeared in volume 64: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101071 Somi Ahn, “She looked ten years older”: Mechanisms of the New Woman’s marriage and premature aging under patriarchy in Sarah Grand’s The Heavenly Twins. This article has already appeared in volume 64: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101100