There was a time, even well after the dawn of feminism, when women’s lives had a shape, and that shape was generally accepted without much fuss.When my daughter was born and named Rose, a friend summed it up: ‘Good name – suits all ages. Baby, little girl, teenager, vampy date, smart young professional woman, blooming mother – all the way to dear old Granny Rose. Excellent.’
It was startling, at the time, to have my baby’s life mapped out like Shakespeare’s Seven Ages Of Man, but I took the point.With luck, my Rose would have a long life and go through many changes.
Indeed, I always find something-satisfying and touching in Evelyn Waugh’s description of the old nurse’s lined face in Brides head Revisited, its serenity formed by ‘hard work in youth, authority in middle age and security in old age’.
We all get older, we pass through phases. The fun of youth is not the same as the fun of maturity or old age, but it is still fun. It surely makes sense to accept the phases and take the best out of them. Doesn’t it?
Not nowadays, it doesn’t. If you believe the line we are constantly fed, half the older women of the Western world are in a panic of denial, desperate to cling to youthfulness with miracle creams, surgery and bare-faced lies, while the other half sink into bitter despondency and drooping cardigans.
One lot compete with their daughters; the other lot resent them. Neither attitude is much fun for the daughters, but the rivalry is the worst. Girls may enjoy a bit of fond mockery,
about Frumpy Mum in her gardening trousers or Executive Mum in her sensible suits, but they prefer her to a wrinkly wannabe who shrieks ‘We’re like sisters!’ and wants to go clubbing with them.
