• Aging, Duration, and the English Novel: Growing Old From Dickens to Woolf (Introduction)

    Author(s):
    Jacob Jewusiak (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    LLC Victorian and Early-20th-Century English, TC Age Studies
    Item Type:
    Book
    Tag(s):
    age, novel, Victorian
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/xk7z-sg16
    Abstract:
    The rapid onset of dementia after an illness, the development of gray hair after a traumatic loss, the sudden appearance of a wrinkle in the brow of a spurned lover. The realist novel uses these conventions to accelerate the process of aging into a descriptive moment, writing the passage of years on the body all at once. Aging, Duration, and the English Novel argues that the formal disappearance of aging from the novel parallels the ideological pressure to identify as being young by repressing the process of growing old. The construction of aging as a shameful event that should be hidden - to improve one's chances on the job market or secure a successful marriage - corresponds to the rise of the long novel, which draws upon the temporality of the body to map progress and decline onto the plots of nineteenth-century British modernity.
    Metadata:
    Published as:
    Book    
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    2 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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