Autobiography of an Elderly Woman

The nameless narrator of this moving study of an aging, feisty, cultivated widow and mother of four adult children defines the secret of growing old wisely as laying aside meaningless social convention and, instead, acting spontaneously. ``Every moment of our lives we are preparing for age; carving out the faces that we are to wear,'' she observes. Spry and defiant, she rebels against the constant interference of her overprotective children, who fret about her health, stuff her with pills and tell her how to behave. Longing for her dead husband's companionship, she gives advice and nurturance to one son, a somewhat arrogant bachelor, and draws close to her grandchildren, thereby closing the circle of generations. It's remarkable that this strikingly modern account of growing old was first published in 1911. It's more remarkable still that it was the work of 37-year-old Mary Heaton Vorse, Greenwich Village bohemian, radical journalist and eventual editor of The Masses, who wrote it in the voice of her mother. Despite a genteel stiffness to the prose, her narrative is a clear pool of wisdom and an antidote to the assumption that old age need be a time of isolated uselessness. (Apr.)