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Aging by the Book
The Emergence of Midlife in Victorian Britain
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Price: $75.00
Hardcover - 260 pages |
| Release Date: March 2009 |
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7657-4
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Price: $24.95
Paperback - 260 pages |
| Release Date: January 2010 |
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7658-1
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| Summary |
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Uncovers the origins of midlife anxiety in Victorian print culture.
Aging by the Book offers an innovative look at the ways in which middle age, which for centuries had been considered the prime of life, was transformed during the Victorian era into a period of decline. Single women were nearing middle age at thirty, and mothers in their forties were expected to become sexless; meanwhile, fortyish men anguished over whether their “time for love had gone by.” Looking at well-known novels of the period, as well as advertisements, cartoons, and medical and advice manuals, Kay Heath uncovers how this ideology of decline permeated a changing culture.
Aging by the Book unmasks and confronts midlife anxiety by examining its origins, demonstrating that our current negative attitude toward midlife springs from Victorian roots, and arguing that only when we understand the culturally constructed nature of age can we expose its ubiquitous and stealthy influence.
“From the shrewd situating of middle age as the liminal rather than central stage between youth and age to insightful rereadings of the marriage plot in relation to narratives of decline, Kay Heath’s Aging by the Book is a significant contribution to both age studies and Victorian studies.” — Teresa Mangum, author of Married, Middlebrow, and Militant: Sarah Grand and the New Woman Novel
Kay Heath is Associate Professor of English at Virginia State University.
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1.
Introduction: The Rise of Midlife in Victorian Britain
2. “No Longer the Man He Was”: Age Anxiety in the
Male Midlife Marriage Plot
3. “The Neutral Man-Woman”: Female Desexualization
at Midlife
4.
Marriageable at Midlife: The Remarrying Widows of
Frances Trollope and Anthony Trollope
5.
In the Eye of the Beholder: Victorian Age
Construction and the Specular Self
6. “How To Keep Young”: Advertising and
Late-Victorian Age Anxiety
7.
Afterword: The Future of Midlife
Notes
Works Cited
Index
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| Related Subjects
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48545/48546(JP/LDS/MC)
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