Ornamental Non-Entities?: Older Women, Historians and the Writings of Ellen Osler and Wilmot Cumberland

Abstract

This article addresses the subject of the role of older women in nineteenth-century North America. Existing historical accounts of the lives and position of older women in Canada and north-eastern USA are both partial and flawed, focusing mainly upon negative images of older women in poverty or in subjugated, passive domestic roles. These images of women's roles are based upon nineteenth-century guides and manuals which tended to portray later life as bleak, unfulfilling and restricted. However, through an examination of diaries and other biographical material describing the everyday lives of middle class women, contrasting evidence emerges of active and powerful roles and positive views of later life. It is argued that the examples discussed are not exceptional cases but rather are representative of a wider nineteenth-century pattern of older women undertaking satisfying and vital social roles within their family and community networks.