The Rhetoric of Female Senescence: A Gynocritical Reading of Selected Poems

Abstract

Drawing on the social pattern of aged women and the factors that contribute to their restricted roles and consequently Otherness, this research examines the discourse of female senescence, a process that biologically indicates the gradual deterioration of functional characteristics in living organisms. Employing gynocritical criticism, the research examines the literary representation of old-age women in selected poems written by women who test the lived experience of growing old and the challenge it offers to individualistic conceptions of selfhood. The research argues that the examined poems implicitly highlight certain perspectives on aging such as social withdrawal, involvement, and social clock, so as to explain how old women might deal with later life experiences. The study further argues that the strategy of literary representation in the examined poems can be seen as a means through which women writers are engaged in an intellectual battle speaking for old women's subjectivity against entrenched ageist beliefs. According to this context, the research aims to answer the question of how female poets can work toward denaturalizing the social pattern of old-age women by presenting unstereotypical poetic representation.  The significance of the study springs from the less attention feminist criticism pays to old-age women's literature aiming at debasing the stereotypical models of female senescence.