(The book of old ladies,
celebrating women of a certain age in fiction, by Ruth O. Saxton, She
Writes Press, Berkeley, CA,2020)
Saxton begins her introduction by
saying, “I have always read fiction to find models for how to live, how to be.”
Wow! I thought that was the terrain of
self-help books which are very popular now. The idea of reading literature with
a motive is new to me. I read just to know and understand life.
When Saxton began her Ph.D. in
literature in the 1980s, she was told that not many women writers were worth
serious study; Virginia Woolf and Doris Lessing were the exceptions as their women
characters existed as worthy individuals in their own right, not just as the
foil for the development of male characters.
Saxton comes from a highly literate
family but she was the first woman in it to go to college. In the ‘70s, she
grappled with marriage, motherhood, feminist activism and also pursued masters
in literature with a focus on American women writers. She also started teaching
in community colleges.
After she became a professor, she
started writing and editing, always searching for female fictional limitations
and possibilities. She started looking for older women in literature and
realised that they were largely invisible. If they were visible, they were
bracketed with two stereotypes, fairy godmother or wicked witch, to wit. And so
began her search for old lady protagonists who were not marginal.
It became a long project of study, student
courses and assignments. The end result is the book above.
It is a book of readings with plentiful
commentary by Saxton. Its central question is: how have women novelists handled
old age?
The answer, the following themes, each
explored in a separate chapter.
· Romancing the past,
· Sex after sixty,
· Altered realities,
· It’s never too late and
· Defying expectations.
In each chapter, Saxton analyses six novels. The
concluding chapter deals with one more novel, Margaret Drabble’s The dark flood
rises (2016).
Thus the book covers 31 novels in its 197
pages. The plot and characters of each are summarized, analyzed and Saxton adds
her own interpretations, comments and sometimes those of her students also. The
novelists covered include Alice Munro, Penelope Lively, Katherine Anne Porter,
Muriel Spark, Vera Sackville-West, Anita Brookner and others. Publication of
the novels spans almost 80 years, from 1930 to 2016.
I am impressed with the scope of the book and
its reader-friendly approach. The plot summaries are particularly useful. How creative
it is to think of such projects for students!
I enjoyed reading the book and I could learn
new things from it.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2008) is
one novel included in the book. I had taken it up for reading some time ago and
I gave it up after the first chapter because I did not understand how the
chapters were linked. After reading Saxton’s comments, I have taken it up again
and it does offer many insights.
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