Materiality and Female Ageing in Contemporary British fiction

Abstract

During the last decades new trends in demography have posed the coming of age as a relevant issue that affects population all around the world. This current interest has been apparent with the emergence of Gerontology as a science in 1940, a new discipline whose theoretical framework is rooted in the interrelation with other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, medicine, architecture or literature, as well as new subfields that are emerging and that occupy the study of old age from new standpoints. The aim of this dissertation is to analyze British women novelists whose narrative addresses the coming of age of women as a central issue in their narrative, as their work provides visibility to women’s ageing bodies, past experiences, fears and frailty to the reader. This analysis will depart from the role that objects, heirlooms, furniture, and/or pictures have in the literary portrayal of ageing characters as they come to terms with the memories of their past, through the accumulation of material evidence as a result of a routine forged over the years.