Old Age and the Embrace of the Uncanny

Abstract

Contextualizing Wharton’s old-aged fiction within depictions of a destabilized old age, or a senescence of decline and imperilled personhood, this chapter compares Wharton’s writing to that of Vorse and Hall. In contrast with visions of a defamiliarized, uncanny aged self, Wharton’s work posits an older age filled with motivating desires and ambitions. This is also fiction that deploys gothic tropes to reveal how completely interaction with the aged tends to destabilize others, especially younger viewers, who see only age’s vagaries and unsteadiness, and who find it fearful.