Putting Age into Place

John Mighton’s Half Life and Joan Barfoot’s Exit Lines

Authors

  • Ulla Kriebernegg University of Graz

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v2i.130742

Keywords:

---

Abstract

This paper addresses cultural constructions of old age in two contemporary Canadian care home narratives. While John Mighton’s play Half Life (2005) is set in a prison-like long-term care facility that is represented as a site of homogenization, oppression, and infantilization, Joan Barfoot’s novel Exit Lines (2008) plays in a hotel-like retirement lodge for wealthy customers that, despite its authoritarian manager, functions as a site of meaningful identity development and intragenerational relationships. What both texts have in common, however, is that they focus on residents’ individual resistance, subversion, and agency, thus opposing the ageist stereotype of decline and deconstructing prevailing norms and negative images of old age as merely physical decrepitude and disease. How is the space of the care home narrated in these two contemporary Canadian texts, and what role do aspects of space and place play for the narrative construction of old age? In this paper, I argue that the spatiality of aging is a category that needs to be incorporated into both an analysis of literary representations of the “fourth age” and an exploration of critical issues of space and place. The juxtaposition of two caregiving institutions in recent Canadian fction contributes to revealing how old age is imagined at the beginning of the twenty-frst century.

Author Biography

Ulla Kriebernegg, University of Graz

is Associate Professor at the Center for Inter-American Studies (C.IAS) at the University of Graz, Austria. Her emphasis in research and teaching is on (Inter-)American literary and cultural studies, interculturality, Jewish migrations to the Americas, and Age/Aging Studies. Her current book project, Age into Place: Age, Space, and Identity in Anglophone North American Care Home Narratives, focuses on representations of long-term care institutions in Canadian and US American flm and fiction. She is chair of ENAS (European Network in Aging Studies) and coeditor of the Aging Studies book series. Readers may write to Ulla Krienbernegg at ulla.krienberneg@uni-graz.at.

References

Andrews, Gavin J. “Residential Homes: From Distributions in Space to the Elements of Place.” Ageing and Place: Perspectives, Policy, Practice. Ed. Gavin J. Andrews and David R. Phillips. London: Routledge, 2005. 61-78.

Arber, Sara, and Jay Ginn. “Class, Caring and the Life Course.” Ageing, Independence, and the Life Course. Ed. Sara Arber and Maria Evandrou. London: Jessica Kingsley in association with the British Society of Gerontology, 1993. 149-68.

Arber, Sara, and Maria Evandrou, eds. Ageing, Independence, and the Life Course. London: Jessica Kingsley in association with the British Society of Gerontology, 1993.

Barfoot, Joan. Duet for Three. 1985. London: Women’s Press, 1986.

—. Exit Lines. 2008. Toronto: Vintage Canadas, 2009.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Dir. John Madden. Perf. Judy Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith. Blueprint Pictures, 2011. DVD.

Charise, Andrea. “‘Let the Reader Think of the Burden’: Old Age and the Crisis of Capacity.” Aging, Old Age, Memory, Aesthetics. Ed. Marlene Goldman, et al. Spec. issue of Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 4 (2012): 1–6. Web. 30 Aug. 2012.

Chivers, Sally. From Old Woman to Older Women: Contemporary Culture and Women’s Narratives. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2003.

—. “Reimagining Care: Images of Aging and Creativity in House Calls and A Year at Sherbrooke.” Aging, Narrative, and Performance: Essay from the Humanities. Spec. issue of International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 7.2 (2012): 53-71.

Cruikshank, Margaret. Learning to Be Old: Gender, Culture, and Aging. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefeld, 2003.

DeFalco, Amelia. “Dementia, Caregiving, and Narrative in Michael Ignatieff ’s Scar Tissue.” Ageing, Old Age, Memory, Aesthetics. Ed. Marlene Goldman, et al. Spec. issue of Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 4 (2012): 1–10. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

—. Uncanny Subjects: Aging in Contemporary Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2010.

Diamond, Timothy. Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House, 1995.

—. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22-27.

Friedan, Betty. The Fountain of Age. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Goffman, Erving. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. 1st ed. Garden City: Anchor, 1961.

Gubrium, Jaber F. Living and Dying at Murray Manor. Expanded pbk. ed. Charlotteville: UP of Virginia, 1997.

Gubrium, Jaber F., and James A. Holstein. “The Nursing Home as a Discursive Anchor for the Ageing Body.” Ageing and Society 19.5 (1999): 519-38. Web. 19 Oct. 2013.

Gullette, Margaret M. Aged by Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004.

Haber, Carole, and Brian Gratton. Old Age and the Search for Security: An American Social History. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.

Harwood, Ronald. Quartet & Equally Divided. London: Faber, 1999.

Heinzelmann, Martin. Das Altenheim – immer noch eine ‚“ Totale Institution”? Eine Untersuchung des Binnenlebens zweier Altenheime. Dissertation. Universität Göttingen, 2004. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.

Jamieson, Sara. “Joan Barfoot’s Exit Lines and the Pastoral of Old Age.” American Review of Canadian Studies 42.3 (2012): 370–83.

Johnson, Julia, Sheena Rolph, and Randall Smith. Residential Care Transformed: Revisiting ‘The Last Refuge’. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012.

Jones, Kenneth. “John Mighton’s Half Life, About Memory, Identity and Love, Gets World Premiere in Toronto Feb. 22.” Playbill, 2005. Web. 16 Jun. 2013.

Katz, Stephen. Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1996.

—. Cultural Aging: Life Course, Lifestyle, and Senior Worlds. Peterborough: Broadview, 2005.

Katz, Stephen, and Kevin McHugh. “Age, Meaning, and Place: Cultural Narratives and Retirement Communities.” A Guide to Humanistic Studies in Aging: What Does It Mean to Grow Old? Ed. Thomas R. Cole, Ruth E. Ray, and Robert Kastenbaum. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010. 271-92.

Laurence, Margaret. The Stone Angel. 1964. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.

Laws, Glenda. “Embodiment and Emplacement: Identities, Representation and Landscape in Sun City Retirement Communities.” The International Journal of Aging and Human Development 40.4 (1995): 253-80.

—. “Spatiality and Age Relations.” Critical Approaches to Ageing and Later Life. Ed. Anne Jamieson, Sarah Harper, and Christina R. Victor. Buckingham: Open UP, 1997. 90-100.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Reprint. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.

Life, Patricia. “From Horror to Hotel: Canadian Literary Depictions of the Nursing Home.” Our Future is Aging: Current Research on Knowledge, Practice and Policy. Mount Saint Vincent University. Halifax. 22 Nov. 2012. Conference Paper.

Maierhofer, Roberta. “American Studies Growing Old.” Crossing Borders: Interdisciplinary Intercultural Interactions. Ed. Bernhard Kettemann and Georg Marko. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1999. 255-68.

Massey, Doreen. Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity, 1994.

McDowell, Linda, and Joanne P. Sharp. Space, Gender, Knowledge: Feminist Readings. London: J. Wiley, 1997.

McHugh, Kevin E. “Three Faces of Ageism: Society, Image and Place.” Ageing & Society 23 (2003). 165-85.

Mighton, John. Half Life. 1st ed. Toronto: Playwrights Canada, 2005.

Moggach, Deborah. These Foolish Things: A Novel. London: Chatto & Windus, 2004.

Quartet. Dir. Dustin Hoffman. Screenplay by Ronald Harwood. Perf. Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Billy Connolly. Headline Pictures, 2012. DVD.

Peace, Sheila M., Leonie A. Kellaher, and Caroline Holland. Environment and Identity in Later Life. Maidenhead: Open UP, 2006.

Peter, Elizabeth. “The History of Nursing in the Home: Revealing the Significance of Place in the Expression of Moral Agency.” Nursing Inquiry 9.2 (2002): 65–72. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.

Rowles, Graham D., and Miriam Bernard, eds. Environmental Gerontology: Making Meaningful Places in Old Age. New York: Springer, 2013.

Sarton, May. As We Are Now. 1973. New York: Norton, 1992

Scotten, Neil. Half Life. A Workbook for Teachers and Students Prepared for the Centaur Theatre Company. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.

Simonsen, Peter. Livslange Liv: Plejehjemromaner og Pensionfortællinger fra Velfærdsstaten. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2014. University of Southern Denmark studies in Scandinavian languages and literatures 118.

Soja, Edward W. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso, 1989.

Waxman, Barbara F. From the Hearth to the Open Road: A Feminist Study of Aging in Contemporary Literature. New York: Greenwood, 1990.

—. “Literary Texts and Literary Critics Team Up against Ageism.” A Guide to Humanistic Studies in Aging: What Does It Mean to Grow Old? Ed. Thomas R. Cole, Ruth E. Ray, and Robert Kastenbaum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010. 83-104.

Wheelwright, Julie. “Exit Lines, by Joan Barfoot: The rage of the aged: a haunting, disturbing tale of growing old disgracefully.” The Independent 17 Sep. 2008. Web. 21 Jun. 2013.

Wyatt-Brown, Anne M. “Resilience and Creativity in Aging: The Realms of Silver.” A Guide to Humanistic Studies in Aging: What Does It Mean to Grow Old? Ed. Thomas R. Cole, Ruth E. Ray, and Robert Kastenbaum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010. 55-82.

Downloads

Published

2015-01-01

How to Cite

Kriebernegg, U. “Putting Age into Place: John Mighton’s Half Life and Joan Barfoot’s Exit Lines”. Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 2, Jan. 2015, pp. 159-83, doi:10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v2i.130742.