Queer Aging in North American Fiction

Linda M. Hess

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030034658
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030034665
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

Exploring representations of queer aging in North American fiction, this book illuminates a rich yet previously unheeded intersection within American culture. At a time when older LGBTQ persons gradually gain visibility in gerontological studies and in the media, this work provides a critical perspective concerned with the ways in which the narratives and images we have at our disposal shape our realities. Each chapter shines a spotlight on a significant work of queer fiction, beginning with post-WWII novels and ending with filmic representations of the 2010s, exploring narratives as both reflections and agents of broader cultural negotiations concerning queer sexuality and aging. As a result, the book not only redresses queer aging's history of invisibility, but also reveals narratives of queer aging to be particularly apt in casting new light on the ways in which growing older is perceived and conceptualized in North American culture.

© The Author(s) 2019

Linda M. HessQueer Aging in North American Fictionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03466-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Queer Aging and the Significance of Representation

Linda M. Hess¹

(1)

Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany

Linda M. Hess

End Abstract

A Conspicuous Absence

Valerie Taylor’s 1988 novel Ripening is a slender volume, the fourth in a series of lesbian pulp novels, which has, by now, fallen largely into obscurity. Nevertheless, it contains what is perhaps one of the most unexpected openings in American literature:

The telephone was ringing. Erika dropped her briefcase, turned the key, pushed the door open, and got there before it stopped. “Hello? Hello?”

“Miss Frohmann? Erika?”

“Isabel?” Erika’s forehead puckered. I’ve been her grandmother’s lover for more than twenty years and she still doesn’t know what to call me. Well, be fair, the kid never heard of me until six months ago and she hasn’t exactly been eager to get acquainted. (Taylor 1988, 1)

How often does one encounter the phrase “grandmother’s lover” in print? How often does “lover” in this case designate a woman?

Both Isabel’s insecurity in her interaction with Erika and the revelation that the women’s relationship has been kept a secret from the granddaughter for all her life point to the obscurity that characterizes Erika’s identity as the “grandmother’s lover.” It is an obscurity that has marked older LGBTQ persons’ lives in North America and representations of queer aging in North American fiction alike for a long time. Even today, three decades later, the novel’s opening resonates with a persistent blind spot in North American culture,¹ one that is not limited to grandmothers. How often do we think of grandfathers as having boyfriends, or of trans-persons as grandparents? How often do we encounter representations of older persons as anything other than heterosexual? In the second decade of the twenty-first century growing old, aging, and old age are still principally imagined in heteronormative terms.

This project began in 2010, when two seemingly unrelated subjects clicked together. I first encountered age studies in a graduate course on “Gender and Aging in Literature.” It was this course that made me aware of age as a significant category of identity and meaning-making. I began to take note of (often stereotypical) representations of aging, and specifically old age, in novels, in advertising, in films, on television. For this reason, age was an element to which I paid particular attention when, around the same time, I became interested in queer fiction and queer theory. Whereas I found that, generally, positive representations of aging were greatly outnumbered by what age studies scholar Margaret Gullette (2004) calls the “decline narrative” of aging (i.e., narratives that equate aging with loss and decay), I suddenly realized that representations of aging LGBTQ persons seemed to be missing almost altogether from narratives about aging as well as from works of queer fiction. After some research, it became clear that only very few scholars had noted this absence, and even fewer were looking at fiction. One of the few whose research focused on LGBTQ aging was Nancy J. Knauer, a law professor, who explained this particular blind spot as a result of overlapping stereotypes. She pointed out, “It is easy to do the math. If seniors are perceived to be asexual (or at least no longer sexual), and gay men and lesbians are primarily defined by their sexuality, then seniors, by definition, cannot be gay or lesbian” (2011, 6). At first glance, the same seemed to hold true for fictional representations as well. Yet the more attention I paid to the subject, the more it became apparent that where older LGBTQ characters seemingly remained absent, age and growing older frequently formed central elements of narratives with queer characters. It also gradually became clear that representations of queer aging did exist—they simply did not seem to receive any attention. As so often in history, it turned out that the “uncharted territory” was not actually unoccupied. A “blind spot,” after all, merely indicates an inability to perceive what’s there from one’s current vantage point, rather than the absence of something to see.

In her book The Becoming of Age, Pamela Gravagne aptly captures what is perhaps the most significant premise of aging studies in the humanities; the conviction that “the pictures we paint of growing older and the stories we tell about aging and old age matter” because “they actually constitute both our understanding and our lived experience of what it means to grow older – our becoming of age” (2013, 1). Two main “pictures” or, perhaps more fittingly, storylines currently dominate North American’s understanding of aging.² The decline narrative is one of them, and probably the most ubiquitous way in which North American societies imagine aging into old age. Who is not familiar with laconic sayings such as “Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” and who has not heard or told anecdotes about the various aches and pains of growing older? How often do people of various ages say, “I am getting old” in reference to something that they experience as a loss of some ability? And while these instances are often amusing and harmless enough, collectively they paint aging as an arduous process, a losing battle against the decline of mental and physical abilities.

More recently, the aging-as-decline narrative has been overtaken by the concept of “successful aging.” At first glance, the concept provides a positive, invigorating narrative of aging because it is defined by such indicators as continued good health and an active and independent life (Rowe and Kahn 1997; Katz and Calasanti 2015). Any online search for “successful aging” will turn up an array of images showing smiling silver- and white-haired couples riding bicycles, walking along the beach, playing with grandchildren, and so on. What is wrong with this picture? Two things. First, as age studies scholars have observed, responsibility for success is put on the individual, ignoring systemic factors such as gender, race, class, and sexuality as central factors that affect a person’s life course and aging. Fuelled by the underlying perpetual threat that one could fail to age successfully, the pressure to ensure that one remains youthful, active, healthy, reinforces anxieties of the decline narrative (Sandberg 2008; Katz and Marshall 2004). Second, and of prime interest to this book, successful aging is exclusively imagined in heteronormative terms, meaning that it ties in with a world view that assumes heterosexuality to be the only normal and natural expression of sexuality. As Barbara Marshall and Linn Sandberg have noted, “heteronormativity and its promises of happiness constitute a powerful narrative that organizes dominant understandings of the good (later) life” (2017, 3).

The realization that heterosexuality is a prerequisite for imagining aging as successful explains the conspicuous absence of older LGBTQ persons from discourses and cultural representations of aging in North America, which seems to find no place for queer aging—at least not within the boundaries of successful aging . Growing old might generally be considered a strenuous process, but it is especially so if one ages in ways that challenge or defy the norms of the heteronormative life course. While aging into old age has rarely been the focus of queer theory, queer theorists such as Lee Edelman and J. Jack Halberstam have explored hegemonic temporal norms and have revealed their strong regulatory influence. As age studies scholar Mary Russo has noted, in North America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, lifetime is presented through the “dominant fiction of chronological aging [which] plots our lives in continually increasing numbers” (1999, 25).³ What seems like a rather obvious fact is indeed worth noting, as it has extensive ramifications. The temporal norms that suffuse our lives establish and police authoritative “blueprints” or “scripts” of how individuals imagine their life courses or plan their futures. As Sarah Schulman puts it,

[e]ven though many heterosexuals avoid the fate/destiny of romance/marriage/parenthood, it is a well worn and instantly recognizable structure upon which most mainstream representations are based. In other words, most bourgeois straight people already know the storyline their lives are supposed to follow before their lives are even begun. (2012, 83)

These scripts go by many names. Edelman has coined the term “reproductive futurism” (2004), whereas Tom Boellstorff speaks of the logic of “straight time” (2007). Halberstam refers to “heterofuturity” (2011), and Elizabeth Freeman uses the concept of “chrononormativity” (2010). All four terms point to the fact that temporal norms are so deeply embed...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Queer Aging and the Significance of Representation
• Part I. The Confines of Straight Time
• Part II. In an Era of Liberations
• Part III. Transitions of the 1990s
• Part IV. Queer Aging in the Young Twenty-First Century
• Part V. Queer Aging Now
• Back Matter