This book examines old age as it was culturally constructed in the 19th century. It begins with the agitated relations set in motion when the increasing number of elderly people unable to provide adequately for themselves found it necessary to contend with sciences which would classify them, arts which would represent them, and a state which was slow to adopt measures of support. The book analyzes illuminating moments in these relations which are displayed variously in narrative form, social policy and cultural attitudes. It considers the centrality of institutions and of the generational divi ... More

This book examines old age as it was culturally constructed in the 19th century. It begins with the agitated relations set in motion when the increasing number of elderly people unable to provide adequately for themselves found it necessary to contend with sciences which would classify them, arts which would represent them, and a state which was slow to adopt measures of support. The book analyzes illuminating moments in these relations which are displayed variously in narrative form, social policy and cultural attitudes. It 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; it studies specific narrative forms for expressing heightened emotions attached to aging and the complexities of representing age in pictorial and statistical “portraits.” The 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. The argument demonstrates that if old age became for the Victorians such a conspicuous public topic and problem, it also became an intensely private preoccupation. The social formation of old age created terms, images, and narratives that lone individuals used to fashion the stories of their lives. The book is intent to respect the specificity of aging: not only the wide diversities of circumstance (rich and poor, urban and rural, watched and forgotten, powerful and dispossessed) but also the distinct acts of representation by novelists, painters, journalists, sociologists and diary-keepers.