Imagi(ni)ng Ageing: Old Women in J.M. Coetzee and Virginia Woolf. Mrs Curren and Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Curren and Age of Iron are further object of study in my second essay, whose interest in South African literature goes back to my majoring with a dissertation on J.M. Coetzee. This time, Coetzee’s ‘portrait of an old woman’ is referred back to Virginia Woolf’s Modernist masterpiece, Mrs Dalloway, where surprisingly, metaphors, iconic images and discourses on ageing women reverberate with striking and even unexpected affinities. Acknowledging Coetzee’s indebtedness to Modernism also means here to compare ageing processes across time, cultures and urban geographies, opening up ageing studies to postcolonial countries.