Women's Midlife and the Crisis of Writing: Karin Michaelis's <em>The Dangerous Age</em> and Rose Macaulay's <em>Dangerous Ages</em>

Authors

  • Phyllis Lassner University of Michigan

Abstract

Long out of print, but particularly timely, are two remarkably similar novels, The Dangerous Age by the Danish writer Karin Michaelis, published in 1910, and Dangerous Ages, published in 1921 by Rose Macaulay. Both novels are about the psychological pain women suffer at midlife, but as these novels show, the crisis transcends a particular moment, experience and symptomatology by resonating throughout women's lives. Although it appeared ten years earlier than the Macaulay novel, Michaelis's work is the more radical. Elsie Lindtner's diary and letters become an aggressive response to women's condition, while Macaulay reveals women's anxiety attending the self-revelation inherent in writing.

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Published

1989-04-10

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (1989)

Section

Original Research

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