Thus far, historians have interpreted representations of elderly women with reference to women’s roles or to women’s positions in society.This article proposes a different approach toward gender: to relate representations of the aged to the sexual identities of both men and women. This article analyzes representations of old age in conduct books of the early-modern period and the nineteenth century. By drawing a comparison, the eighteenth-century change of “identity regime” in European culture is brought to the fore.The article points to the influence of sexual identities on the representations of senior persons in advice literature both in Dutch and translated into Dutch.
Cf. Peter N. Stearns, Old Age in European Society (London: Croom Helm, 1977).
2.
Cf. Pat Thane, ed., The Long History of Old Age (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005); Sussanah R. Ottaway, The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Pat Thane, Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000); Paul Johnson, "Historical Readings of Old Age and Aging," in Old Age from Antiquity to Post-modernity, ed. Paul Johnson and Pat Thane (London: Routledge, 1998), 1-18; Monique Stavenuiter and Karin Bijsterveld, "Inleiding," in Lange levens, stille getuigen: Oudere vrouwen in het verleden, ed. Monique Stavenuiter, et al. (Zutphen, Netherlands: Walburg Pers, 1995), 9-20; David G. Troyansky, Old Age in the Old Regime: Image and Experience in Eighteenth-century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).
3.
Recent examples can be found in Thane’s anthology The Long History of Old Age; the contributors describe aged women with reference to sexual roles or to women’s status in comparison to old men.
4.
Cf. Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 31-33, 41-50.
5.
Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-century England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), xiii.
6.
Shulamith Shahar, "The Middle Ages and Renaissance," in The Long History of Old Age, ed. Pat Thane (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 76; Shulamith Shahar, "Old Age in the High and Late Middle Ages: Image, Expectation and Status," in Old Age from Antiquity to Post-modernity, ed. Paul Johnson and Pat Thane (London: Routledge, 1998), 45; Shulamith Shahar, Growing Old in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1997), 18-19.
7.
Shahar, Growing Old, 25.
8.
Ibid., 27. The exception to the rule was found in two English laws banning vagrancy that exempted women older than sixty from compulsory labor. Shahar relates this exception to the fact that it concerned poor women. Ibid., 27.
9.
Ibid., 24.
10.
This consequence of the cessation of the menses is mentioned in the medieval treatise on women’s bodies De secretis mulierum, ascribed to Albertus Magnus. Ibid., 44. This aspect was still being discussed in seventeenth-century treatises. L. A. Botelho, "Images of Old Age in Early Modern Cheap Print: Women, Witches and the Poisonous Female Body," in Power and Poverty: Old Age in the Pre-industrial Past, ed. Susannah R. Ottaway, et al. (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), 234-38.
11.
Shahar, Growing Old, 44. Many authors have pointed to the association between the senior woman and lust. Ottaway, Decline of Life, 30-31, 41-44; Botelho, "Images of Old Age," 234-38; Katharine Kittredge, "‘The Ag’d Dame to Venery Inclin’d’: Images of Sexual Older Women in Eighteenth-century Britain," in Power and Poverty: Old Age in the Pre-industrial Past, ed. Susannah R. Ottaway, et al. (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), 260-61; Lois W. Banner, In Full Flower: Aging Women, Power and Sexuality (New York: Knopf, 1992).
12.
Margaret Pelling, "Thoroughly Resented? Older Women and the Medical Role in Early Modern England," in Women, Science and Medicine, 1500-1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society, ed. Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton ( Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1977), 83.
13.
Thane, Old Age in English History, 54.
14.
Botelho, "Images of Old Age," 234, 238.
15.
Michel Foucault, Histoire de la Sexualité. Vol. 1: La Volonté de Savoir ( Paris: Gallimard, 1967), 50-67.
16.
Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les Choses: Une Archéologie des Sciences Humaines ( Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 32-59, 314-54.
17.
Cf. Wahrman, Making of the Modern Self, 42.
18.
Ruth Gilbert , Early Modern Hermaphrodites ( Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002), 35-41.
19.
Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-century England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1984), 1-6; Norman Jones, The Birth of the Elizabethan Age. England in the 1560’s (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1993), 132.
20.
Thomas Laqueur , Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press1990), 8.
21.
From 1700 until the late eighteenth century, only a handful of conduct books for adults were published because of the dominance of Cats’s marriage manual. The genre started to proliferate from the 1790s onward.Marja van Tilburg, Hoe hoorde het? Seksualiteit en partnerkeuze in de Nederlandse adviesliteratuur 1780-1890 ( Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1998), 13-14, 19-37.
22.
This format is derived from medieval representations of the cycle of life. It offers a pictorial and/or textual representation of the phases of life. As a result of some sixteenth-century changes, it acquired a distinctively disciplining quality. Cf. Thomas R. Cole, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 3-31; Rudolf Schenda, "Die Alterstreppe- Geschichte einer Popularisierung," in Die Lebenstreppe: Bilder der menschlichen Lebensalter (Cologne, Germany: Rheinland Verlag and R. Habelt, 1983), 18-24.
23.
Together, the texts and the pictures of these conduct books create a multilayered source. Shahar has warned against arguing purely on the basis of pictorial representations of the cycle of life. Shahar, "Middle Ages and Renaissance," 71.
24.
Scott, Gender, 28-50.
25.
In the early sixteenth century, the marriage manual had already acquired a distinct format: it discussed the choice of a partner, the conjugal relationship, and the management of the household. Consequently, it presented rules of conduct for soon-to-be-married and married couples. In most Dutch manuals, the guidelines were ordered according to their diverging roles as partners, parents, and employers.
26.
Joost Kloek, "Burgerdeugd of burgermansdeugd? Het beeld van Jacob Cats als nationaal zedenmeester," in De stijl van de burger: Over Nederlandse burgerlijke cultuur vanaf de Middeleeuwen, ed. Remieg Aerts and Henk te Velde (Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Agora, 1998), 103, 106-14. This circulation was made possible because of the production of both deluxe and cheap editions. Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London: Collins, 1987), 4-6. This book offers illustrations of both types of editions on page 5.
27.
Ibid., 4.
28.
Jacob Cats, Houwelick, dat is het gansch beleyt des echten-staets, afgedeylt in zes hooft-stucken, te weten: Maeght, vrijster, bruyt, vrouwe, moeder, weduwe, behel-sende mede de mannelicke tegenplichten [Marriage, that is the whole management of the marital state, divided into six chapters, namely virgin, suitor (i.e., female suitor), bride, wife, mother, widow, containing the male counterduties] (Middelburg, Netherlands: Jan Pietersz. Vande Venne, 1625).
29.
Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, 7-8, 567-69. For an assessment of the political, religious, and socioeconomic divisions within the Dutch Republic, see Maarten Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 4-5.
30.
Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies, 1650: Bevochten eendracht (The Hague, Netherlands: Sdu Uitgevers, 1999), 51, 182-84.
31.
The text mentions "een machtich vorst" (a mighty king) and "van geduchte macht" (of great power). Cats, Houwelick, II:1-2a.
32.
These two guidelines go well beyond the obedience that a woman owes her husband according to Protestant and Catholic teachings. Marja van Tilburg, "Where Has ‘the Wise, Old Woman’ Gone . . . ? Gender and Age in Early Modern and Modern Advice Literature," in The Prime of Their Lives: Wise Old Women in Pre-industrial Europe, ed. Anneke B. Mulder Bakker and Renée Nip (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 2004), 150-54; A. Agnes Sneller, "Reading Jacob Cats," in Women of the Golden Age: An International Debate on Women in Seventeenth-century Holland, England and Italy, ed. E. Kloek, et al. (Hilversum, Netherlands: Verloren, 1994), 21-34.
33.
Frijhoff and Spies, 1650: Bevochten eendracht, 28, 586. For an assessment of Cats’s role in the Republic, see "Nawoord," in Jacob Cats, Huwelijk, ed. A. Agnes Sneller and Boukje Thijs (Amsterdam: Querido 1993), 137-53. In the most recently published English-language overview of the history of Dutch literature, Cats is described as the "embodiment of Dutch Christian bourgeois culture." M. A. Schenkeveld, Dutch Literature in the Age of Rembrandt: Themes and Ideas (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1991), 31.
34.
Just a few seventeenth-century examples use trees to indicate growth and decay. These have a tall tree with full foliage to the left-pictured next to the stages from birth to adulthood-and a dead tree with cut, bare branches to the right-next to the stages from adulthood to death. Cf. Schenda, "Die Alterstreppe," 21-22.
35.
Comprehensive overviews can be found in Thane, Old Age in English History, 29-55; Shahar, Growing Old, 12-69.
36.
This idea may be derived from Plato’s Republic. Thane, Old Age in English History, 35-39.
37.
Cats, Houwelick, IV:20.
38.
Ibid., IV:21.
39.
This opinion is shared by many contemporary theologians and philosophers. Thane, Old Age in English History, 56-59; Botelho, "The 17th Century," in The Long History of Old Age, ed. Pat Thane (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 127-28, 133-35.
40.
Cats, Houwelick, IV:20-22.
41.
"Ick weet wien ick geloof; mijn siele weest gerust; de vlouck is van het Lam voor eeuwich uyt-geblust." Ibid., IV:43 (all translations of the Dutch texts are the author’s).
42.
Ibid., IV:39-43.
43.
"Daer is geen beter raet wanneerje buyten slijt, als welt e nemen acht hoe dat je binnen zijt." Ibid., IV:24.
44.
Cats writes, "grijse Vorst." Ibid., IV:20.
45.
Many of Cats’s contemporaries considered women capable of wisdom. Botelho, "17th Century " 127-28, 133-35; Botelho, "Images of Old Age," 236; Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Renée Nip, eds., The Prime of Their Lives: Wise Old Women in Pre-industrial Europe (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 2005).
46.
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (The Hague, Netherlands: Nijhof, 1882-1998), II:1117. In this article, I use the word mature to refer to bedaeghd and the word old in all other instances. Note that the word mature is not an exact translation of bedaeghd.
47.
"En doet in dit geval gelijck de wijse slangen; Daer is geen beter raet wanneerje buyten slijt, als wel te nemen acht hoe dat je binnen zijt." Cats, Houwelick, IV:24.
48.
Until the late eighteenth century, the format of the conduct book resembled the format of the twentieth-century book of etiquette. Tilburg, Hoe hoorde het? 13-14, 40-46.
49.
The largest of these societies, the so-called Maatschappij tot Nut van’t Algemeen, had a department in every Dutch town. Joost Kloek and Wijnand Mijnhardt, 1800: Blauwdrukken voor een samenleving (The Hague, Netherlands: SDU Uitgevers, 2001), 120-24.
50.
Wijnand W. Mijnhardt and Antonius J. Wichers, eds., Om het algemeen volksgeluk: Twee eeuwen particulier initiatief 1784-1984 (Edam, Netherlands: Maatschappij tot Nut van’t Algemeen, 1984), 16-17.
51.
Wijnand W. Mijnhardt, "The Dutch Enlightenment: Humanism, Nationalism, and Decline," in The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment and Revolution, ed. Margaret C. Jacob and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 205-9.
52.
A. Loosjes Pz., De man in de vier tijdperken zijns levens [The man in the four phases of his life] (Haarlem, Netherlands: A. Loosjes Pz., 1809).
53.
Ibid., 256-57.
54.
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, II:1117.
55.
Loosjes, De man, 301-2.
56.
A. Loosjes Pz., De vrouw in de vier tijdperken haars levens [The woman in the four phases of her life] (Haarlem, Netherlands: A. Loosjes Pz., 1809).
57.
Ibid., 296.
58.
"Maar niet toone aan haren jeugdigen Echtgenoot, dat zij, onder den last der huiszorgen bezwaard, naar het huis harer ouderen hunkere." Ibid., 167-68.
59.
Ibid., 261.
60.
Ibid., 263.
61.
Ibid., 296.
62.
Also mentioned in the text. Ibid., 296.
63.
Thane, Old Age in English History, 54.
64.
Thomas R. Cole and Claudia Edwards, "The 19th Century," in The Long History of Old Age, ed. Pat Thane ( London: Thames & Hudson, 2005 ), 261.
