An examination of mature women and their relationships with each other and with men explores the roots of Western attitudes and stereotypes about aging women beginning with ancient myths and rituals. Tour.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This is a masterwork of scholarship and a milestone in our understanding of how Western civilization has demeaned the older woman. Banner ( American Beauty ) shows how, from antiquity on, stereotypes have restricted the power that knowledge and experience should naturally confer on older women. Like an archeologist, the author sifts through myth, literature and history--her Rosetta stone, the film Sunset Boulevard. About a faded movie star portrayed by silent-screen star Gloria Swanson, the movie contains manifest and latent cultural messages, lies and truth about older women. With this as model Banner scrutinizes text and subtext of the Odyssey ; the legends of Helen of Troy, Adonis and Sappho; and the story of the Wife of Bath. She also examines the life and work of Margaret Fuller and Colette. Other themes covered are menopause, older women and young men duos; Mother Goose and the Old Maid card game get a close look too. Banner turns to African American women for positive middle-aged and elder role models in a study that helps set the historical record straight. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This is a complex, difficult book that should nonetheless be of great interest to scholars of women's studies. Interdisciplinary in scope, and utilizing a variety of demographic, economic, psychological, and literaty insights, it is a sweeping survey of the history of aging women in Western culture. Drawing upon a vast array of sources (novels, myths, movies, personal memoirs, as well as the most recent scholarship in social and family history), cultural historian and professor Banner ( American Beauty , LJ 1/83) traces the ways in which aging women have been both empowered and denigrated, often coping with contradictory stereotypes like dowager, grandmother, witch. She also attempts to delineate the unique experiences of women who were neither white nor middle class, and she traces the personal stories of aging women of achievement like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Margaret Mead. Banner ends her provocative study by sketching out further areas for research in this heretofore neglected area of history.
- Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Information, Uneven Writing,
By A Customer
This review is from: In Full Flower: Aging Women, Power, and Sexuality (Hardcover)
The one point that I found of particular interest was the waxing and waning of women's social and economic status with changes in sex ratio (the number of women in porportion to the number of men) and the economic effect women's control of property had on the lives of men. Women gained when their numbers were few relative to the numbers of men, and women's control of property was restricted when it interfered with young men's abilities to make their marks in the world. There is a lot of information and valuable historical perspective; however, the author vacillated between failure to develop some important points and overdiscussion of others. Isolated sections (far too few) were quite good--good writing and good information with a balanced analysis. Banner chose a worthy subject, and she is a good writer. The book would have benefitted from more attention to organization of the material and a more stringent editor.
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