engleski

Beyond ageism, beyond sexism – gender issues, ageing and sexuality in Vedrana Rudan´s novel The Skeletons of Madison County

Role of literature is multiple – it reflects society, entertains but also has potential „of changing people´s attitudes“ (Frey Waxman, 2010:83). Fiction stories about old persons, old age and ageing are „recognized as… important insights to gerontological knowledge“ (Zeilig, 2011:7). In the novel The Skeletons of Madison County (Kosturi okruga Madison) (2012) Croatian writer Vedrana Rudan gets even, in a provocative way, with patriarchal comprehension of sexuality, love and marriage and limiting ageist constructions of ageing and old age. By doing so she precisely describes social, cultural and political context in which these gender and age constructions emerge, persist, but are also questioned. Heroine of the novel is Mrs. Pavica who finds "true love" in her seventies and becomes aware of the meaning of authentic partnership. Referring to the love story of the film The Bridges of Madison County (1995), the heroine experiences deep life transformation, bringing into question all previously adopted patriarchal gender constructions that guided her through life so far. With a view to send her daughter letters after her death to tell her all she did not tell her while she was alive, Pavica describes experiences of unfulfiling marital relationships, intergenerational lack of understanding and questions earlier internalized attitudes towards sexuality. Her feminist message is evident as well as her attempt to convey emancipating advices to her daughter, the advices that have been transgenerationally conveyed as an important women´s family heritage. In the novel, through multiple love relationships among characters, there are two age determined and binary narratives of old age and ageing interwoven, that are articulated primarily through the prism of female body and sexuality. From the position of younger female characters, ageing of women is treated as a decline and loss of physical attractiveness, where motives of competition among women as well as internalized sexism and ageism are evident. Again, Mrs. Pavica, beyond socially and culturally imposed sexist and ageist limitations, understands and lives old age as emancipating and transformational process, that (finally) enables her to live an authentic life. More detailed analysis shows a contribution of this novel to the development of feminist, critical and social gerontology, and also a great stimulus for the readers to question their (gender) stereotypes of ageing, old age and old persons.

sociology of literature, gender, sexism, ageism, Vedrana Rudan

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