Shame and the Aging Woman ― Confronting and Resisting Ageism in Contemporary Women's Writings

This book brings together the research findings of contemporary feminist age studies scholars, shame theorists, and feminist gerontologists in order to unfurl the affective dynamics of gendered ageism. In her analysis of what she calls “embodied shame,” J. Brooks Bouson describes older women’s shame about the visible signs of aging and the health and appearance of their bodies as they undergo the normal processes of bodily aging. Examining both fictional and nonfiction works by contemporary North American and British women authors, this book offers a sustained analysis of the various ways that ageism devalues and damages the identities of otherwise psychologically healthy women in our graying culture. Shame theory, as Bouson shows, astutely explains why gendered ageism is so deeply entrenched in our culture and why even aging feminists may succumb to this distressing, but sometimes hidden, cultural affliction.

J. Brooks Bouson is Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago, USA. She has published nine books, includingEmbodied Shame: Uncovering Female Shame in Contemporary Women’s Writings; Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison; Jamaica Kincaid: Writing Memory, Writing Back to the Mother; and Brutal Choreographies: Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of Margaret Atwood.