The ‘Dys-Appearing’ Body in Doris Lessing’s The Diary of a Good Neighbour and Margaret Forster’s Have the Men Had Enough?

If the old body is usually read as a synonym of fragility and upcoming illness, even though not the case for most elderly citizens, the reality is that the longer we live, the increased probability of being affected by different illnesses cannot be eluded or denied. In Doris Lessing’s The Diary of a Good Neighbour and Margaret Forster’s Have the Men Had Enough? the reader is invited to participate in the day-to-day routines of two aged female protagonists, as well as to empathize with their inner feelings as they go through their last life stage. In fact, their ‘dys-appearing’ bodies, marked by their respective terminal illnesses, force these characters to grow closer to those around them and to accept the help of their families and friends, despite their desire to keep their free will and independence until the very end. The analysis of the two novels within the framework of ageing studies aims to show the contradictions existing between a growing ageing society and the negative cultural connotations of old age in Western society and the need to revise them

Towards old age through memory and narrative in Penelope Lively's 'The photograph' and 'How it all began'

This article analyses two novels by contemporary British author Penelope Lively by focusing on a recurrent topic in Lively's fiction: the interrelation between memory and narrative in order to make sense of lived time as opposed to chronological time. In Lively's The Photograph (2003) and How It All Began (2011), two apparently insignificant episodes force the two main characters, Glyn and Charlotte respectively, to revise their memories as well as life stories when entering their old age. Revising their life narratives by going back to their memories and making sense of their present situations proves to be a rewarding exercise which helps both protagonists to be ready to step into a new life stage. On the other hand, the narrative of each of the novels is constructed through the voices of those family members and friends who are part of Glyn's and Charlotte's past and present, and who contribute to add information to the respective revision processes of the protagonists, showing that time and memory, as well as narrative, are subjective constructed categories

Memory Revisited in Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending

An accumulation of years brings with it an accumulation of experiences. The revision of such experiences usually becomes more recurrent after retirement, a transition time from one period of life to another and, as such, a time in which we, human beings, have a tendency to take stock of our lives. This is actually one of the main issues present in Julian Barnes's last novel The Sense of an Ending (2011). When the main protagonist, a retired man quite comfortable and contented with his present life, receives an unexpected inheritance from the mother of a girlfriend from his university years, he is forced to track down a part of his life that he had left at the back of his mind a long time ago. As he explains his story, the protagonist and narrator of the novel raises a number of questions related to the quality and function of memory as one gets into old age. He experiments the unreliability of memory and questions to what extent memory is constructed through the remembered emotions that invaded him over that episode of his life rather than through the events as they actually took place. On the other hand, the act of revisiting and revising that specific episode, brings with it feelings of guilt and remorse as the protagonist realises that his past acts were not as noble as he remembered them to be. However, these acts are part of the past and they cannot be changed; thus, another question that the novel raises is how to account for those actions of which one does not feel proud and, more importantly, how to manage those bad memories as one gets older

Invisible Environments: Old Age and Its Spaces

Despite the progressive ageing of a worldwide population, negative attitudes towards old age have proliferated thanks to cultural constructs and myths that, for decades, have presented old age as a synonym of decay, deterioration and loss. Moreover, even though every human being knows he/she will age and that ageing is a process that cannot be stopped, it always seems distant, far off in the future and, therefore, remains invisible. In this paper, I aim to analyse the invisibility of old age and its spaces through two contemporary novels and their ageing females protagonists .–Maudie Fowler in Doris Lessing.’s The Diary of a Good Neighbour and Erica March in Rose Tremain.’s The Cupboard. Although invisible to the rest of society, these elderly characters succeed in becoming significant in the lives of younger protagonists who, immersed in their active lives, become aware of the need to enlarge our vision of old age. A pesar del progresivo envejecimiento de la población mundial, actitudes negativas hacia la tercera edad han proliferado gracias a construcciones culturales y mitos que, durante décadas, han representado la vejez como sinónimo de deterioro y pérdida. Los seres humananos somos conscientes de que el proceso de envejecimiento es imparable; no obstante, siempre nos parece muy lejano, parte de un futuro que preferimos no visualizar y, en consecuencia, el concepto de vejez permanece invisible. En este artículo, pretendo analizar la vejez como un espacio invisible de nuestra socieadd a través de dos novelas inglesas contemporáneas protagonizadas por dos personajes femeninos bien entrados en la tercera edad .–Madie Fowler en The Diary of a Good Neighbour de Doris Lessing y Erica March en The Cupboard de Rose Tremain. Aunque invisibles para el resto de la sociedad, Maudie y Erica, a sus ochenta y tantos, se convierten en parte esencial y significativa de la vida de dos protagonistas más jóvenes que, inmersos en sus activas vidas, acaban cuestionando el espacio físico y simbólicos que ocupa la vejez en nuestra sociedad

Memory Revisited in Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending

The history of Spanish departments in Australian universities can be traced back to the 1960s, when a number of British hispanistas relocated to Australia and created a small number of successful teaching programs that reproduced the British model. A second generation of Spanish scholars arrived in the 1980s and 1990s, mainly from Latin American countries, in a migration wave that is still current. The transition from a British understanding of the Spanish discipline, with a strong focus on (canonical) literary studies, to current curricula that emphasise communicative skills and a loose notion of cultural studies, is symptomatic of deeper changes in the way the discipline has sought to reposition itself in the context of the Modern Languages debate

Envejecimiento femenino: Revisando Reifungsroman en The Summer Before the Dark and Love, Again en Doris Lessing

The ageing process is usually perceived as a time of loss and decline, especially for women. The first signs of ageing are shown in the external body. In Western societies, wrinkles, white hair, impending falling jaws and limbs are seen, both by ageing women themselves and by their communities, as a straight and unstoppable road into invisibility that will end up in social exclusion. This is the first reaction the main female characters in Doris Lessing's The Summer Before the Dark (1973) and Love, Again (1996) experiment when they scrutinise their faces and bodies in front of the mirror and fail to recognise them as their real ones, the ones that defined them in their youth, just a few years ago. Parting from Barbara Frey Waxman's concept of Reifungsroman (1988), this paper intends to analyse how the female protagonists in Doris Lessing's The Summer Before the Dark and Love, Again perceive the changes going on inside them as their bodies are increasingly losing the virtues of youth and how they come to terms with those changes and succeed in undermining cultural conceptions of ageing in women