Through the Looking Glass: Reflections of Ageing Women In the Poetry of Nineteenth-Century France

Abstract

This article analyses representations of old women in nineteenth-century French poetry from the perspectives of gender and age studies. It surveys the material conditions of old women and considers canonical male-authored poetry, which tended to portray them either as 'la bonne vieille' or 'la vieille infâme'. These stereotypes reflect a socio-economic context that privileged youthful beauty and denigrated elderly women. Women poets (Girardin, Ségalas, Ackermann, Siefert, Krysinska, Vivien) responded to cultural and poetic platitudes about old women, sometimes in acquiescence and sometimes with condemnation. Beyond its anxiety about the physical marks of ageing, women's poetry evaluated identities that shift with the passage of time. The mirror functions as a powerful symbol for this self-analysis, whether reflecting mourning for lost youth or the hopeful exploration of a new identity. In confronting the drama of ageing, women's poetry bespeaks real social burdens and the force of cultural stereotypes, even as it questions and dismantles dominant poetic tropes.