Sherryl Wilson Sherryl2.Wilson@uwe.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer
She’s Been Away: Ageing, madness and memory
Wilson, Sherryl
Authors
Contributors
Ulla Kriebernegg
Editor
Roberta Maierhofer
Editor
Barbara
Editor
Abstract
She’s Been Away is a television drama written by Stephen Poliakoff and broadcast in the UK on the BBC in 1989. This paper discusses the ways in which the play unusually presents a feminist critique of contemporary patriarchal structures through the mobilisation of an elderly woman’s memories that, once excavated, liberate her and act as a force for empowerment in a younger woman. I draw on the ideas of prothestic memory posited by Alison Landsberg (2004) to argue that memory provides a mechanism through which the confluence of madness, old age and memory disrupts expectations and punctures the consciousness. The combination of Lillian’s age and her intergenerational relation with her niece-in-law subvert the well worn tropes and reconfigures ageing as wisdom able to produce a new sense of empowerment. As such, She’s Been Away is both a celebration of the unruly older woman and a meditation on the power of memory to produce counter discourse.
Citation
Wilson, S. (2014). She’s Been Away: Ageing, madness and memory. In U. Kriebernegg, R. Maierhofer, & B. Ratzenböck (Eds.), Alive and Kicking at All Ages: Cultural Constructions of Health and Life Course Identity (187-202). Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag
Publication Date | Mar 24, 2014 |
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Journal | Aging Studies Series entitled “Alive and Kicking at All Ages: Cultural Constructions of Health and Life Course Identity.” |
Peer Reviewed | Not Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 5 |
Pages | 187-202 |
Series Title | Aging Studies |
Book Title | Alive and Kicking at All Ages: Cultural Constructions of Health and Life Course Identity |
ISBN | 9783837625820 |
Keywords | ageing, madness, television drama, memory, unruly, patriarchy |
Publisher URL | http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-2582-0/alive-and-kicking-at-all-ages |
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