Cranford - Menopause

I may be a little early on reading this article, since we haven't finished the book, but I found this ... sort of funny... at least very interesting article on Cranford, menopause and sexuality.

Titled: Malthusian Menopause: Aging and Sexuality in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford

Link: Malthusian Menopause
(I found this from the UNCW website, so you may have to sign into the library to view it)

If you're interested you should check it out :)

Sneak Preview:
"The model of non-reproductive sexuality in Cranford is a repositioning of a Malthusian economics of population, one that addresses the social marginalization of older women through its challenge to the contemporary idea that female post-menopausal sexuality is anathema."

[Malthusian - Someone who believes that population will always grow faster than the food supply that it needs to survive and prosper

anathema - a detested person]

This reminded me of a few lines from "A Castaway:"

Here's cause; the woman's superfluity:
and for the cure, why, if it were the law,
say, every year, in due percentages,
balancing them with men as the times need,
to kill off female infants, 'twould make room;

[and]

so many lives of women, useless else,
it buys us of ourselves, we could hold back,
free all of us to starve, and some of us,...
to slave their lives out and have food and clothes
until they grow unserviceably old


:)

Image from: Jane Austen in Vermont




[Victorian Literature]