“Younger People are Preferred”: The Self-Images of Elderly Women Represented in Their Letters to a Dutch Almshouse,1885-1940

Abstract

Between 1885 and 1940, about 150 women of the Dutch lower middle class wrote letters to apply for rooms in the Van Brants Rushofje in Amsterdam, an institution especially meant for elderly women. This article analyses the self-images of these women, defined as an evaluation of their own situations, and asks the question whether these women related their self-images to their advanced age or to changing social circumstances, such as loss of work, decline of income, changes within the household, and the onset of illnesses. The article focuses on the period around 1900 because at that time, the almshouse was still functioning in its nineteenthcentury philanthropic tradition.