The Victorians and Old Age (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780199564361)

Karen Chase examines old age as it was constructed in Victorian social and literary cultures. Beginning with the vexed relation between elderly people whose numbers and needs taxed the state which sought to identify, classify, and provide for them, she analyzes illuminating moments in narrative form, social policy, or cultural attitudes. The book considers the centrality of institutions and of the generational divide; it traces the power and powerlessness of age through a range of characters and individuals as distinct from one another as Dickens's inebriated nurse, Sairey Gamp, to the sober Queen Victoria; and it studies specific narrative forms for expressing heightened emotions attached to aging and the complexities of representing age in pictorial and statistical 'portraits'. Chapters are organized around major literary works set alongside episodes and artifacts, diaries and memoirs, images and inscriptions, that produced (and now illuminate) the construction of old age through Victoria's long reign.

Author: Karen Chase
ISBN-10: 0199564361
ISBN-13: 9780199564361
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English
Published: 08/10/2009
Pages: 300
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.40w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2010