DESPERATELY SEEKING THE SELF: GENDER, AGE, AND IDENTITY IN TILLIE OLSEN'S TELL ME A RIDDLE AND MICHELLE HERMAN'S MISSING

Abstract

Using the feminist concept of the resisting reader, this article attempts to show how literary gerontology can profit from the understanding that individual identity , both in literature and society, is culturally constructed and tied to race, class, gender, and age. As feminist theory distinguishes between sex and gender, so should a distinction be made between chronological age and the cultural stereotypes associated with old people, which would help escape the confining binary opposition of young and old. Both Tillie Olsen's short story, Tell Me a Riddle and Michelle Herman's novel Missing- written almost 30 years apart - show the necessary quest for defining one's self in old age. In my reading of the texts, I see the main protagonists, Eva and Rivke, reconstructing their identities by trying to work through conflicts which individuals are unable or unwilling to repress. This construction of their individual identity takes place against the odds of societal pressure to conform to a status of old and female. Both texts show that a repudiation of stereotypical notions of women's role in society as mothers and grandmothers questions the use of chronological age as a basis for identity. This leads to a definition of self that is not based on a gender - or age - defined position within the narrow social structures, but which allows the reader to reclaim women in a position of authority who can be seen shaping their own, individual identities.

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