NotNormativelyHuman 261
for a moment before she was free. Then she ran down the hall, without
lookingbehindher.(1479)Throughout, the text rehearses cultural stereotypes of late life as
associatedwithbodilyandmentaldecline,andhousedinanunappealing
place. The old ladies are shown as physically and personally
unappealing, self-centered, and incapable of taking care of themselves
sothattheirinstitutionalconfinementseemslikeagoodidea.Intheend,
we as readers are as happy to leave them behind as Marian is. But the
textdoesnotsimplyre-inscribetheculturalstereotypesof"age,"itrelies
also on more specifically literary conventions: most obviously, it
borrows repeatedly from the arsenal of the gothic. Marian's "Visit of
Charity" is like a trip to the haunted castle; the hall of the Old Ladies'
homeislikeasubterraneancorridor,theyounggirlfeelsdizzy("Marian
feltasif shewaswalkingonthewaves"[1476]).In addition,thewhole
story is also reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood's famed visit to
grandma (and, indeed, Marian is wearing a red coat), only that it's not
the wolf posing for grandma rather the other way around: and the two
elderly ladies are repeatedly invested with predatory attributes, they
have hands like "claws" and one of them "suddenly clutch[es]" their
visitorsothatMarianrunsaway(1479).Sucharepresentationalagenda
might well be termed ageist (as in racist or sexist) because it reinforces
rather than questions prevailing stereotypes about the aging while also
invokingthe"NursingHomeSpecter"(Friedan500).^93
ThepointthatmightbemadehereisnotsimplytoupbraidWeltyfor
her unflattering representation of the elderly; more importantly, it is the
spatialorganizationofwhatisbothanarrativeofappearance(ofMarian
but also of the predatory old women) and disappearance (their
confinement in a location that Marian and possibly many readers are
running away from) that is crucial for the marginalization of late life.
This is part of a series of spatial dichotomies which, like the chain of
signifiers in poststructuralist thought, work like relay stations to define
theplaceof"age,"spacewhichwe(togetherwithMarian)canapproach
in a spectatorial mode. Adorno's point about the close affinity between
(^93) In herFountain of Age(1993), Friedan devotes a whole book chapter to a
feministcritiqueofthegenderedgeographyoflatelife(500-37).