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Decline and Progress: The portrayal of age in fiction by Mordecai Richler and Robertson Davies A Thesis submitted to the Committee of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science Trent University Peterborough, Ontario, Canada Copyright by Patricia Life 2008 MA Program in Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies September 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-43194-8 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-43194-8 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada Abstract Decline and Progress: The Portrayal of Age in Fiction by Mordecai Richler and Robertson Davies Patricia Life This interdisciplinary thesis combines the fields of literary criticism and Age Studies in order to offer an analysis of the novels Barney's Version (1997) by Mordecai Richler and The Cunning Man (1994) by Robertson Davies. I position the novels as illustrations of Margaret Morganroth Gullette's and Kathleen Woodward's theories in regard to progress-and-decline narratives and in regard to the multiplicity and fluidity of human identity. The novels counter the ideology of "positive aging" and their "little narratives" resist the cultural "grand narrative" which depicts age by means of an either/or progress/decline binary. The novels offer an alternative "version" which depicts aging as the negotiation, across the entire life course, of a maze of intersecting decline and progress. I argue that age-related expectations influence the interpretation of texts and that aging people's attitudes towards themselves and others may be inaccessible, masked beneath apparent narratives of progress and/or decline. Key Words: Age Studies; literary criticism; gerontology; narrative; identity; progress; decline. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements Chapters 1 Introduction 2 Theoretical Approach 3 Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version - "In my present state of decline" 4 Barney's Version - Fracturing the Binary of Progress and Decline 5 Robertson Davies' The Cunning Man - "Gain, every moment of it" 6 The Cunning Man - Behind the Curtain of Progress 7 Conclusion - Navigating the Web of Decline and Progress Works Cited iii Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my thesis committee - Dr. Stephen Katz, Dr. Sally Olivers and Dr. Michael Peterman - for their kindness and patience and for the intellectual guidance they provided during the writing of this thesis. I would like to thank my husband Richard Life and my son Jonathan Life for their encouragement and moral support. As well, I extend my gratitude to OGS and SSHRC for funding my research and making the writing of this thesis possible. IV 1 Chapter 1: Introduction This thesis explores the portrayal of age in two Canadian novels, Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler and The Cunning Man by Robertson Davies. I have selected this topic because it allows me to combine two compelling areas of study: the first is Canadian literature; the second is the process of aging. My interest in aging and ageism arose gradually over a period of eighteen years. During this time I acted as my mother's caregiver and advocate as she experienced the onset and ensuing development of dementia. During the same time period, my academic interest in the study of age was stimulated by a number of situations in which I found myself resisting the expectations which my culture was imposing on me in regard to age- appropriate behaviours. First, I discovered that as a volunteer and family-council member at the long-term-care facilities at which my mother was a resident, I was a bit too "young." Most volunteers were of "retirement age." Then, when I returned to university in my forties as a part-time student in order to complete an undergraduate degree in literature, I was a bit too "old" for that role. When I retired from a sports/coaching career after twenty-five years, I was too "young" to be a retiree. When I returned to university as a graduate student, I discovered that I was rather "old" to be a full-time student. Although I am female, white, middle-class, English-speaking, Canadian and able- bodied, the category by which of late I am most frequently identified is age. During the last two decades, I repeatedly have been seen as being either too old or too young to fit society's age-appropriate ideals. Canadian culture perceives age first as chronology, but it complicates chronological age by associating it with types of behaviour used to characterize individuals marked by chronological ages. In this regard, my conduct has 2 been inconsistent with those of most other people of a similar age; and since I have acted against the prevailing age narratives of my society, I have encountered resistance not just from others but also from my own culturally induced and internalized sense of proper behaviour. What I find to be most curious is that I have been considered old in one context yet, simultaneously, young in another. As a result of these personal experiences, I have become intrigued by the relationship in my culture between chronological age categories and the imposition of age-related expectations. In this thesis three meanings of age emerge. The first two are common understandings of the term. The first of these is that "age" is a constructed measurement of the fixed time set apart in periods of life through a developmental process. Hence periods such as "young," "middle-aged," and "old-aged" are determined according to an individual's anticipated progress across the expected human life course. A second meaning of age derives from the social conditions by which age gradations are administered and governed in a collective sense. For instance, four-year-olds are considered too old to need diapers and, in most of North America, fourteen-year-olds are considered too young to marry. There are legal and bureaucratic "ages" associated with drinking, voting, marrying, driving and within educational and military systems, themselves crosscut by relations of gender, race, class and region. Thirdly, as I have found by personal experience, age gains meaning through relativistic and interactive processes. Hence, age exists on a continuum of relationships. To a typical long-term-care resident, I am "youn§>" whereas to a typical graduate student I am "old." Further complicating the complexity created by the relativity of age, cultures assign a variety of expectations in regard to age which can create contradictory meanings. Different ages are 3 associated with different age-related behaviours. For instance, some people believe that age brings wisdom, whereas other people believe that old people experience mental decline; neither belief is completely accurate. What remains unambiguous is that, consciously and unconsciously, most people in Western culture categorize themselves and others according to chronological age and according to age-related expectations, yet seem not to acknowledge the fluidity and relational conditions that underlie their experiences of aging. One of the most important areas wherein constructed and relational meanings of age intersect is retirement and transitions from "productive" to supposedly "unproductive" periods of life. Pat Thane (2000) looks to "literary evidence from the 16th century" to support the claim that for "both men and women in preindustrial Europe old age was defined by appearance and capacities rather than by age-defined rules about pensions and retirement; hence people could be defined as 'old' at variable ages" (9). Thane also notes that "research into English poor relief records in the 18th century first describe[s] some people as 'old' in their 50s, others not until their 70s" (9). Thane indicates that often menopause was seen as the beginning of old age for women and the inability to perform manual labour as the beginning of old age for men. Where frequently in contemporary times, government disciplines a society through mandatory retirement restrictions based simply on chronological age, less emphasis is placed on function as a delineation of age. In contemporary Ontario society, the recent discontinuation of mandatory retirement has decreased the significance of chronological age measurement.

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