This critical study explores late twentieth century novels by women writers - including Doris Lessing, May Sarton and Barbara Pym - that feature female protagonists over the age of sixty. These novels create alternate discourses on aging to those largely pejorative ones that dominate Western society. They break the silence that normally surrounds the lives of the aged by creating narratives that refuse to deal purely in discourses of stagnation and decline. One strategy they share is placing an older female protagonist at the heart of the narrative, and this book investigates how she is...