Senior Toronto blog

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, older female characters in novels get a pretty bad rap. Often they’re portrayed as evil, mad, mean or cantankerous. Otherwise they’re needy, doddering old fools. In either case, they’re an annoyance and a burden on their families. Wouldn’t it be nice if they were depicted simply as full-fledged humans, with their quirks and foibles and unresolved issues, but also with maturity, wisdom and emotional strength, living their lives as fully as age allows, and engaged with their community and the larger world? In other words, people like everyone else. Even in these supposedly enlightened, feminist times, they’re still thin on the ground, but I found a few:

• Lillian Boxfish, in Lillian Boxfish takes a walk, by Kathleen Rooney. A clever, spirited young woman becomes a top-earning advertising writer, working for Macy’s in the 1920s. She's forced to quit when she becomes pregnant. She loses her career, husband and sense of worth. Her style of advertising becomes passé. But in her 80s, she’s still sharp, curious, independent, funny, walking through New York City past sites of old memories on New Year’s Eve 1984.
• Olive Kitteridge, in Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. Abrasive yet empathetic, retired math teacher Olive Kitteridge flits in and out of thirteen linked stories about life in a fictional small town in Maine. As she ages, she struggles to make sense of the changes in her life. She’s brusque and bossy and hard to like, but she reaches out to people who are suffering. It’s a portrait of life as it is: there is cruelty and loss, but also tenderness and compassion.
• Sheila Malory, in the Mrs Malory cozy mystery series, by Hazel Holt. Sheila Malory, a widow and part-time literary critic, is an amateur detective living in a quaint English village. Independent and sociable, she gathers information from the many people who trust and confide in her. Realistic discussions of aging among her friends, dignified portraits of older women.
• Jane Marple, in the Miss Marple mystery series, by Agatha Christie. Elderly single woman living in an English village. She’s shrewd and observant, and has a remarkable understanding of human nature which she claims she has learned by observing village life. She’s often dismissed as a dithering, unassuming old lady, but this enables her to go about unnoticed as she gains access to conversations and crime scenes. She often embarrasses the local police by solving crimes they cannot puzzle out.
• Emily Pollifax, in the Mrs Pollifax mystery series, by Dorothy Gilman. Mrs Pollifax, a New Jersey widow who is bored with her garden club and hospital volunteer work, joins the CIA. Like Miss Marple, she uses her age to great advantage: no one would suspect a kindly grandmother of being a cold war spy. But she’s more than up to the task: wily, tough, intuitive, very tuned in to other people, calm under stress, willing to face death if need be. Each book is set in a different country, with the politics and conflicts of the cold war era very much in evidence.
• Charlotte Rainsford, in How it all began, by Penelope Lively. Charlotte, a widow and retired schoolteacher in her 70s, breaks a hip while being mugged in the street. She moves in temporarily with her daughter Rose, thereby knocking several lives out of kilter. Fiercely self-reliant, Charlotte chafes against her enforced dependency, boredom and pain. Sparkling narrative, finely drawn characters, tracing the way an act of fate can ripple through our lives.
• Hagar Shipley, in The stone angel, by Margaret Laurence. Hagar, 90 years old, stubborn, bitter and in serious decline, nurses her resentments as she reviews her hardscrabble life, rebelling against the strictures of gender and class, prideful and blind to her own faults. She finally manages a reconciliation of sorts with her long-suffering family. Brutally honest.
• Various characters in Margaret Atwood's later novels: Moral disorder, Old babes in the wood, Stone mattress. Evocative portrayals of widowhood; clever, sly skewering of boomer nostalgia and aging feminists.
• Various characters in Exit lines, by Joan Barfoot. Four people become friends in a retirement home. Thoughtful, sensitive writing about loss of independence, bereavement, dealing with adult children. Avoids stereotypes; funny in all the right places.
• Various characters in The dark flood rises, by Margaret Drabble. A loose network of seniors, variously coping or not coping with old age, but still pursuing their lifelong intellectual passions, especially art and literature.

When US President Joe Biden, aged 80, announced his reelection bid in April 2023, he met with a barrage of condemnation. Voters and pundits on all sides called him too old to run, claiming to be concerned about his physical health and stamina, and the possibility of cognitive decline. Are their concerns justified? How much does age matter in a political leader?

It’s interesting that age seems to be the only criterion we want to apply to political leaders. Isn’t that strange? Think of the jobs you’ve had, the qualifications you had to painstakingly earn and live up to. Yet for a job as important and powerful as that of running a city, province or country, we require practically no qualifications at all, apart from citizenship and a clean criminal record. We would certainly never choose our doctors and lawyers and accountants this way.

If we wanted to require some basic qualifications for our political leaders, what would they be? Should we expect a minimum level of education, some training or experience in public administration, a basic understanding of how our government works, what a democracy is, what basic rights and obligations exist between the governors and the governed? On that basis, many leaders wouldn’t get through the door. But maybe they don’t need these skills as long as they surround themselves with smart, knowledgeable advisors. In any case, the most important traits in a successful leader seem to be about character: a strong moral sense; support for the common good; lack of bias; willingness to listen and learn, change and adapt; ability to build consensus and rally support; good communication skills; empathy; vision; integrity. There aren’t any objective tests for all those things. But there is no reason to suppose that old leaders would be lacking such traits any more than young ones. These qualities take time to build, so we could even argue that older people would make better leaders.

The problem with requiring minimum standards for political leaders is that it could be said to undermine democracy, as it would deprive most people of the right to contest elections. So if we want to support democracy, we accept the risk of rule by the ignorant, the powermongers and the charlatans. There’s certainly no shortage of those folks, both young and old.

If you’d like to close that democratic loophole, there are plenty of qualifications to choose from. Take your time and think about which ones you would require, and how you would apply them. Just don’t be too quick to play the age card.