الفهرس 
The Portrayal of Aging Women of May Sarton’s As We Are Now, Doris Lessing’s Love, Again, And Penelope Lively’s Spiderweb : An Analytical Study
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Abstract
This paper examines the portrayal of ageing women in three novels, namely, May Sarton’sAs
We Are Now (1973), Doris Lessing’s Love, Again (1995), and Penelope Lively’s Spiderweb
(1998). The examination is conducted in cadence with the growing interest in literary
gerontological studies. Mainstream thought regards ageing as a period of decline in physical
strength and mental functioning besides social disengagement. However, the point of departure
of this paper is different. It argues that the ageing process is a more complex, subjective route of
development for one’s self where the aging subject embraces the points of weaknesses and
sanguinely evolves into wholeness.
The theoretical background of this thesis will be based on what Barbara Frey Waxman has
introduced in her work from the Hearth to the Open Road: A Feminist Study of Aging in
Contemporary Literature (1990) as the emerging sub-genre of the Reifungsroman. In dealing
with the chosen literary texts, the present study applies different literary techniques which are
meant to help the readers see through the eyes of the elderly and hear their voice. These works
reveal the elders’ potentials in accommodating old age and successfully growing gracefully into
it, according to their subjective perspective of ’achievement’. Beside the
Reifungsroman’stechniques, other theoretical approaches will be used whenever needed.