“Countering Ageism in Nancy Huston’s Dolce agonia and Michèle Ouimet’s L’heure mauve”

Authors

  • Susan Ireland
  • Patrice Proulx

Abstract

In her 2017 study of the nefarious effects of ageism, Margaret Morganroth Gullette brings to light the fact that marginalization is one of its most disturbing consequences, positing that, in comparison with racism, sexism, and homophobia, “ageism is the least censured, the most acceptable and unnoticed of the cruel prejudices” (xiii). Women in particular have been adversely affected by the disparaging notions that have resulted from the intersections of aging and gender. As early as 1972, Susan Sontag pointed to the “double standard about aging that denounces women with special severity” (31), while in 2013 Elaine Showalter affirmed, “It’s not easy to come out as an old person, especially as an old woman” (xi). Since the emergence of the field of Age Studies in the 1990s, however, a growing corpus of academic analyses and of fictional and auto/biographical works has begun to contest the ageist assumptions which demean the elderly. Nancy Huston’s Dolce Agonia and Michèle Ouimet’s L’heure mauve, which exemplify this trend, foreground diverse responses to the experience of aging, ill health, and loss. The polyphonic structure of these novels creates a multifaceted dialogue on important topics related to the process of aging and both take up Lynne Segal’s challenge to us all to “think again, think more imaginatively, about ageing” (2). 

Author Biographies

Susan Ireland

Susan Ireland is Orville and Mary Patterson Routt Professor of Literature at Grinnell College. Her current research interests include memory studies, trauma narratives, the Algerian novel, aging studies, and the literature of immigration and diaspora in France and Quebec. She is an editor of The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature (Greenwood, 1999) and, with Patrice J. Proulx, of Immigrant Narratives in Contemporary France (Greenwood, 2001) and Textualizing the Immigrant Experience in Contemporary Quebec (Praeger, 2004). She has also published articles in journals such as L’Esprit Créateur, Québec Studies, World Literature Today, and Nottingham French Studies.

Patrice Proulx

Patrice J. Proulx is Professor of French and Director of Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha and holds affiliated faculty status with The Goldstein Center for Human Rights. Her research and teaching interests include contemporary French and francophone literature and film, cultural studies, and the literature of immigration in France and Quebec. Her articles have appeared in such journals as The French Review, L’Esprit Créateur, Québec Studies, and Sites: Contemporary French & Francophone Studies, as well as in a number of edited collections. She is an editor of The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature and co-editor with Susan Ireland of Immigrant Narratives in Contemporary France, and Textualizing the Immigrant Experience in Contemporary Quebec.

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Published

2023-11-07

Issue

No. 123 (2023): « Lorsque vient le soir de la vie ». Représentations de la vieillesse dans les littératures d'expression française du XXIe siècle

Section

Articles