In the cultural imagination, midlife signifies the onset of ageing and is thus framed in a discourse of decline. For women, it is often considered in terms of menopause and the end of fecundity and fertility. This book proposes that womens experience of midlife is much broader than this; instead, it is characterised by transformation in multiple life domains and health status is important. The continuity theory of ageing is useful here: identity is re/constructed during the ageing process in response to changing bodily circumstances, such as health problems. Women in rural Australia described...