An Excerpt from From the Hearth to the Open Road

By Barbara Frey Waxman

Beginning the Journey to Selfhood in Middle Age

"Middle-age spread," "fat and forty," "middle-age depression," "empty nest syndrome," "middle-age crisis," "lonely middle-aged widow": these stereotypical associations with middle age suggest stagnation; the loss of physical vitality, attractiveness, and usefulness to others; diminishing self-pride; and increasing isolation. Americans, Britons, and Canadians may attempt to slough off the negatives with redoubled efforts at jogging and aerobic exercise classes or with jokes about dieting, facelifts, and hair color, but despair often hovers behind the sweating and the levity.

In contrast, much contemporary fiction by women is challenging these stereotypes by helping readers to see the potential in middle age for discovery and new activities, for continuing the reifung, or emotional and philosophical ripening begun in youth. Reifungsromane enable readers to experience vicariously the lives and thoughts of middle-aged heroines who glow in self-knowledge and energy and change the direction of their lives. The London based Doris Lessing has created two such middle-aged heroines in, Kate Brown of The Summer Before the Dark (1973) and Jane Somers of The Diaries of Jane Somers (1983). The San Francisco-based Alice Adams explores American versions of the adventurous middle-aged heroine in three short stories from To See You Again (1982). Both authors present middle age as a time to take to the open road, often literally, when their heroines discover who they are and where they want to go for the rest of their lives. Both authors also undermine the polarity between youth and age by presenting "youthfully" passionate and active middle-aged women.