The Australian Reifungsroman : Reading women’s ageing in Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection and Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide

The Reifungsroman in the Australian context

Reifungsromane, or “novels of ripening”, as Waxman explains, “emerge as intensely female in language and feminist in politics” (1990: 186). The Reifungsroman characterizes the ageing process as an open road for women to take so that they can move toward their “final maturation”. Therefore, in narratives of this nature, ageing is no longer related to decline. Instead, the second half of a life is presented as “a time of discovery, liberation and adventure” (1990: 11). Accordingly, the Reifungsroman often involves the protagonist’s actual and intimate psychological journeys, the former being intrinsically linked to the latter (Schrage-Früh, 2017). During the course of these journeys, the heroine grapples with problems of ageing and identity. With the completion of both journeys, she is able to establish a newer selfhood that is not determined by mainstream male and youth-oriented culture.

According to these generic features outlined by Waxman, literary works that can be characterized as Reifungsromane in Australian literature include Jessica Anderson’s Tirra Lirra by the River (1978), Dorothy Hewett’s The Toucher (1993) and Neap Tide (1999), Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection (2000), and Liz Byrski’s Gang of Four (2004) and Belly Dancing for Beginners (2006). These fictional works enjoy great popularity among readers in that, by bringing to the fore Australian women’s complex ageing experiences, they challenge the stereotypes of women’s ageing and thus construct ageing women’s diverse voices. ²

Simultaneously, it should be noted that, in these narratives, the Reifungsroman, as a genre that is still in the making, has been integrated with the unique Australian context to present Australian women’s ageing experiences. More precisely, the Australian Reifungsroman not only addresses the classic topic of how women redefine ageing as a process of progress, but also looks into the question of how ageing women in Australia articulate their stories of acquiring empowerment within the grand narrative of the national identity. Among the fictional works mentioned above, Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection and Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide best represent this feature of Australian Reifungsromane. The following discussion provides detailed textual analysis centring on the portrayal of non-stereotypical images of ageing women in these two works. In doing so, I want to highlight the formation of a positive conception of ageing through these women’s stories of rejuvenation.

Redefining the perfect: Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection

Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection can be described as a typical Reifungsroman in that it presents features that dovetail with Waxman’s definition of the classic Reifungsroman. Older women take a journey to remote places, where they acquire “self-knowledge, self-development, and a role for the future” (Waxman, 1990: 16). In Grenville’s novel, the ageing protagonist’s journey to individual development is presented as a process of subverting the stereotypical idea of “perfection”. As Grenville demonstrates in the narrative, perfection is a heavily gendered conception which creates parts for women to play. To be “perfect”, a woman has to fulfil the narrow role of being the perfect wife and mother. As Angela McRobbie points out, in a patriarchal context, “the perfect relies […] most fully on restoring traditional femininity, which means that female competition is inscribed within specific horizons of value relating to husbands, work partners and boyfriends, family and home, motherhood and maternity” (2015: 7). In this sense, the idea of perfection functions as a social construction that stabilizes the patriarchal system. If by any chance a woman lives outside this rhetoric, just like Grenville’s protagonist, Harley Savage, she is likely to be described as “a woman with a dangerous streak” (2000: 40). ³ She will thus suffer denigration from the society that operates under the guidance of patriarchal discourses.

Furthermore, women not only find themselves under the scrutiny of the patriarchal gaze, but are also subjected to an internalized gaze. The latter, to quote from Jacques Lacan, is not a seen gaze, “but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the other” (1981: 84). In other words, women tend to internalize the dominant social and moral standards — for example, “the idea of perfection” — and they conform to them unknowingly. Simone de Beauvoir’s famous conclusion that “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman” (1972/1949: 283), can be employed here to explain how a woman’s understanding of perfection is sculpted by the patriarchal narrative and practised by the internalized gaze.

This learned cultural shame of being “imperfect” can be further intensified by the coming of old age (Segal and Showalter, 2013; Bouson, 2016). As noted earlier, the cultural narrative of ageing is closely associated with decline, and older women tend to be systematically devalued in this prevailing discourse. When this systematic devaluation is internalized by ageing women, the shame of being imperfect is induced. In other words, once a woman is categorized as “ageing”, she is excluded from assessment with regard to perfection. She loses the right to enter the evaluation system because the dominant discourses reject her as “something alien, a foreign species” (de Beauvoir, 1977: 315). In light of this, the stereotypical idea of perfection inflicts itself upon ageing women in a much more brutal way than for men, and ageing women tend to berate themselves for their own perceived inadequacy.

In The Idea of Perfection, Harley Savage is a typical victim of the idea of perfection. She constantly blames herself for being imperfect: a woman in her fifties, a divorcee, and a supposedly self-centred career woman who is not close to her children. Even her name, Harley Savage, stands in counterpoint to traditional femininity in that it evokes images of Harley-Davidson motorcycles (which are usually associated in popular culture with masculine power). Her unkempt appearance is not in keeping with the expectations of what constitutes a feminine woman:

She was a big rawboned plain person, tall and unlikely, with a ragged haircut and a white tee-shirt coming unstitched along the shoulder. It was a long time since she’d been young and it was unlikely that she’d ever been lovely. She stood like man, square-on. Her breasts pushed out the old tee-shirt, but it was clear from the way she stood that she’d forgotten about breasts being sexy. Her breasts made bulges in her shirt the same way her knees made bulges in her black track pants, that was all. (Grenville, 2000: 2)

Imprisoned within the internalized patriarchal gaze, Harley herself is quite aware of her imperfection:

Harley Savage was not adorable. She was not even a particularly nice person. She was not especially generous or unselfish. She was not a sunny soul. She was not especially talented or creative, except in a limited way. She had certainly never been pretty, much less beautiful. (Grenville, 2000: 40; emphasis in original)

In the above passage describing Harley’s self-reflection, Grenville italicizes each of the terms that are often used to describe the “ideal” women. By revealing that she fails to possess any of these aspects of traditional femininity, Harley’s self-disappointment is greatly accentuated. She finds that to be “perfect” is like “an exam she could never pass” (40). Thus, Harley falls into serious doubt about her womanhood. She chooses a most negative way to cope with this, refusing to develop any close relationships with anyone in order to reduce the risk of exposure. Confining herself to her own world, Harley sees this as the only way of protecting herself from being “wound” (146), as in coiled, by the outer world. However, what Harley does not realize is that by distancing herself from others, she is also punishing herself for being not perfect enough to fit in, in what is essentially an embodied form of self-denigration.

It becomes particularly apparent that only when Harley overcomes the internalized shame imposed by the patriarchal order can she empower herself to develop a self that is newer and truer. The little town of Karakarook provides Harley with the perfect place to start her journey of awakening. During the process of setting up the Karakarook Heritage Museum, as the invited consultant Harley must socialize with the local people in order to collect their art works. It is during this process that she begins to accept people with minor imperfections. Harley reflects: “You did not just pick out the best bits of life. You took the whole lot, the good and the bad” (179). By accepting people for who they were, “now and again you were rewarded with the small pleasure of being able to laugh, not uproariously but genuinely, at a small witticism offered by someone who was usually a bore” (179).

The small pleasure of being with people only nudges Harley to rethink her own imperfection. Meanwhile her sexual relationship with the male character, Douglas Chessman, prompts her to interrogate her womanhood. During the course of the narrative, there are multiple times when Douglas shows his affection for Harley, but each time Harley chooses to ignore it because she does not think an ageing woman with “a dangerous streak” like her is entitled to be loved. Even when she finally works up the courage to accept an invitation from Douglas, she still questions the legitimacy of her having a date with him at such an age: “A date. With such a woman as herself, the idea of a date could only be ironic” (239; emphasis in original). The constant internal denigration also lingers for long after the date, as Harley resents herself for being cheerful as she returns to her house: “She hated herself for that singing on the way home. Who did she think she was, some peach-cheeked girl?” (274). It is clear that Harley’s self-abasement is further exacerbated by the coming of old age.

In the novel, this self-inflicted emotional torment affects Harley to such a degree that she immediately falls ill after the date. This can also be understood as a metaphorical illness which is a commonly used strategy in the Reifungsroman, employed to indicate how severe the protagonist’s mental struggle is. By externalizing Harley’s emotional burdens as physical pain, Grenville reinforces the connection between body and mind. She leaves readers with the impression that what Harley is suffering from is not only an attack of gastric stress, but also an excruciating spiritual ordeal. As Harley tosses in her bed from the pain, she also tosses around in her mind the idea of retreating back into her little world, versus the desire to reach out and make a change. Either way, Harley has to admit that “she had been interested” (275; emphasis in original). The implication is that all she needs is a push so that she can break free from her previous sense of selfhood, which is haunted by disparagement.

The seminal moment that can be read as the completion of Harley’s final transformation appears towards the end of the novel, when Harley refuses Douglas’s company and decides to go to the swimming hole by herself. In the novel, the swimming hole represents an intimate, yet dangerous space in which Harley is forced to deal with her fears and pains. Unique about this time is that she does not evade them. Swimming alone, Harley’s loneliness is obvious: “The emptiness of the pond was suddenly frightening. It was as if she was the only living creature in the world. It was just her and her shaky heart. Alone had always seemed like freedom. Suddenly, it seemed like a life sentence” (348; emphasis in original). Her foreboding remarks soon become reality — she becomes stuck and unable to move her legs, opening up the possibility that she may drown.

Once again, a connection between the body and the mind is posited here. Harley’s mental struggle to overcome the emotional turmoil and her physical struggle to survive are juxtaposed in this scene. Moreover, both struggles are intensified by her reminiscences about her ex-husband Philip’s suicide. For years, Harley has condemned herself for Philip’s death, and “she had taken it, the savagery of what he has chosen, as the final proof of her own guilt […] she had judged herself, and put herself away in the cage marked dangerous” (352–353; emphasis in original). The feeling of guilt further evokes Harley’s shame of not being able to meet the social ideal of the “good wife”. At that moment, Harley is so overtaken by shame that she almost yields to the idea of giving up her life. However, she thinks about Douglas. If she drowns, Douglas will have to suffer the same guilt as she did, but, apparently, “his crimes did not deserve such a punishment” (353). Then comes the final realization: “Perhaps hers had not either” (353). For the first time in the narration, Harley defends herself:

What had they been, those crimes of hers? A fear of revealing herself that could look like indifference, a coldness in the face of declarations, a malicious turn of phrase, and all the usual ones: dishonesty, selfishness, envy and greed. None of it was anything special. She was not a monster, so dangerous that she had to hide herself away for fear of the damage she might inflict. She was only that most ordinary of criminals, a human being. (353; emphasis in original)

It dawns on Harley that all her anxieties are rooted in the discrepancy between a predefined female identity, and her own desire to be different yet “dangerous”. In retrospect, Harley finds that all her “imperfections” and “weaknesses” are nothing special but the most ordinary characteristics a human being possesses. However, as a woman positioned in the patriarchal rhetoric, Harley is defined as “dangerous”. This negative classification prompts both Harley and the reader to problematize the idea of perfection. Harley, contemplating her subjective experience as a woman, finally reaches the conclusion that it is not her in herself, but the heavily gendered standards for the perfect wife and mother that make her dangerous. Blaming herself for being “disqualified” only adds fuel to the social and moral structures which alienate her further. On the other hand, breaking free from the stereotypical idea of perfection is the critical means by which she can be empowered. Allegorically, at the moment of Harley’s mental emancipation, she is able to move her legs through the water. Upon her arrival at the bank, a feeling of rebirth arises: “Her skin felt silky and smooth, as if a layer had been washed off” (354). Harley’s former self has been chipped away during the process of mental reflection and physical struggle, and a new Harley begins to take shape. She can feel that “the solid little block that had been Harley Savage, the one with the dangerous streak, had broken open, and it seemed possible that the parts might rearrange themselves, although into what new shapes she could not imagine” (397; emphasis in original).

In a sense, with Harley’s survival from the swimming hole, she also succeeds in lessening, if not undermining, the shame of gender and age. At the end of the novel, sitting with Douglas in front of her house, Harley is confident enough to say that “life itself was a declaration” (400; emphasis in original). By claiming her life as her own, Harley challenges and dismantles the judging gaze from both outside and within. At this point, the spiritual journey of Harley Savage is accomplished, and her individual development is reached. She embraces her newer selfhood, and anticipates a myriad possibilities in old age.

Through a nuanced illustration of Harley Savage’s experience in breaking free from the stereotypical idea of perfection, Grenville uses her narrative as a form of textual resistance to the dominant patriarchal discourse in which “specific and limiting gender roles are culturally assigned and determined” (Kossew, 2007: 8). It is also through redefining the idea of perfection that Grenville provides an alternative view of women’s ageing. In this view, the coming of old age is not a calamity; rather, it is a valuable chance to exert women’s self-efficacy to rework the entrenched narrative of ageing-as-decline.

Reinscribing the ageing identity: Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide

In similar ways to Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection, Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide presents itself as a typical Reifungsroman. However, when compared to Grenville’s novel with regard to resisting the undoing of women’s selfhood with the onset of old age, Hewett goes further. She suggests reinscribing Australian ageing women’s voices within the framework of Australian national identity. In the novel, the protagonist Jessica Sorensen’s spiritual journey is paralleled with a wider quest for “Australianness”. Her individual feeling of unbelonging is delicately linked to the national psychic pain, which Germaine Greer termed as “the pain of unbelonging” (2004). In so doing, Hewett not only challenges the construction of Australian national identity which is primarily dominated by male discourses (MacKenzie, 1962; Dixson, 1984; Schaffer, 1988; Summers, 1994; Kossew, 2010), but also provides an alternative way to engage with women’s ageing in the unique Australian cultural context.

In many ways, Jessica Sorensen reminds readers of Harley Savage in The Idea of Perfection, as both are “imperfect” according to the patriarchal standards for women. Jessica first appears in the story as a mentally and physically debilitated loner. She is struggling to manage the troublesome relationships with her father and her estranged brother, the suicide of her first husband, and the serial unfaithfulness of her second husband. All of these situations compel her to question her ability to be a good daughter, mother, sister, and wife.

At the same time, Jessica’s self-disappointment at being imperfect is significantly foregrounded after she undergoes a hysterectomy. The uterus, it has often been argued, is central to the understanding of what a woman is. The removal of such a heavily gendered organ not only indicates human suffering, but also points to “a fractured gender identity” (Solbrække and Bondevik, 2015: 7). In Jessica’s case, the removal of her womb is a brutal act of extracting her female sexuality, which aggravates her suffering even further.

Jessica’s mental crisis is not ameliorated after she retreats to the coastal town of Zane, where she hopes to find self-reconciliation. Instead, her emotional pain is intensified significantly. In regards to her emotional life, Jessica’s self-devaluation ratchets up, due to another failed sexual relationship with Jack Shriver, a married poet who also comes to stay in Zane. In the novel, Jack Shriver is portrayed as a sexual predator, ego-driven, narcissistic, and later revealed to be sexually abusive. The fact that Jessica never actually agrees to the affair but is swept along says a great deal about her depressive and even masochistic tendencies. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that when Jack abandons her, what Jessica expresses is not her disappointment for Jack but her shame at being old and useless: “That’s me […] split and old, with a wrinkled hide, battered by the elements, losing my usefulness, so don’t break the rules, don’t demand the impossible, just take what you can get while there’s still time” (Hewett, 1999: 66). ⁴ This is also the first time in the narrative Jessica reveals her concern about ageing, and clearly enough, the fact of being old, like the fact of losing her uterus, is critical in effecting her self-conceptualization.

The hysterectomy appears to leave Jessica with a strong sense of incompleteness, while ageing underscores her feeling of being degraded and alienated. Moreover, this feeling of being incapable persists when Jessica thinks about her academic career:

She felt alien to the world of the university nowadays. Some of her colleagues still hung on, even past sixty-five, sitting in their offices, dogs in the manger, passing the time, a joke or irritant preventing the young and jobless from any hope of tenure. The old conception of age equaling wisdom was laughable now, probably it has always been just a cynical piece of trickery to hang onto the remnants of power. Old age was equated with Alzheimer’s and retirement homes, rows of geriatrics staring at the TV screen, meekly swallowing their medication, waiting for death. (154)

Jessica’s concern about her career is mingled with her contemplation on the issue of old age. On the one hand, she can see very clearly that her future has been laid out by older colleagues — repetitive and stagnant. On the other hand, this stereotypical picture of old age is not what she wants. She means to pursue a different life; however, as Margaret Gullette notes, “unlearning the master narrative of decline may be as painful and prolonged as extirpating internalized racism and sexism” (2004: 129–130). For ageing women like Jessica, it is not only hard to overcome the internalized ideology of “ageing equals decline”, it is also extremely difficult to imagine an alternative future that echoes their authentic desires. Consequently, a sense of loss arises, leading Jessica to think to herself:

So perhaps she had outlived her usefulness, it was time to go, to leave the signs and symbols of a language she no longer recognized. But she was only fifty-five. Where would she go and what would she do with the rest of her life if she took early retirement now? She could collect her superannuation and travel, but travel presupposed some final destination, some homecoming […] No, she thought, I have no home in the world, only this rented cottage clinging precariously to a coastline broken by storms and washed by brimming tides. (Hewett, 1999: 155)

The isolated town of Zane, it seems, should be the only place that Jessica can refer to as “home”. However, the longer she stays, the more acutely she is aware of the profound growth of loneliness. To be more precise, as a woman, she is denied a gendered existence by the patriarchal system. As a member of the white community, the fact of living as a guest in the country of the Aborigines evokes a deeper feeling of being lost. This severe sense of estrangement can be perceived from Jessica’s conversation with one of the local residents, Max.

“I sometimes think,” Jessica said, “we’ve no right to be here at all.”

“Where would we go? Back to the mother country? What mother country? We wouldn’t fit in there either.”

“Then it’s like Zac said,” she murmured, “we’re the white ghost, homeless, belonging nowhere. That’s a pretty melancholy future.” (167–168)

At this stage, Jessica’s personal crisis is taken into a wider socio-political context; it resonates with the national spiritual crisis — “the pain of unbelonging”. In fact, this psychic pain had always haunted Australian society, both for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. For the Aboriginal community, this unremitting pain originates in the forceful separation from their own land and culture that they once belonged to. For Australia’s settler community, their psychic pain comes from the trauma of “migration […] to a land from which there (could) be no return” (Greer, 2004: 11). This is compounded by the “absolute unfamiliarity with the alien space of the colony” (Collingwood-Whittick, 2007: xiv). To quote Lenny (one of the local residents of Zane): “it’s a sad life, white or black, living alone in the bush with only the trees for company” (Hewett, 1999: 47). However, as he continues, “perhaps the blackfellas do it better than us” (47). Unlike Australia’s indigenous inhabitants who are able to define themselves in relationship to the land, white settlers “still have no inherent attachment to the land like Aborigines” (Lattas, 2009: 55). To heal, or to reconcile the feeling of alienation from a land they have colonized, one of the critical strategies the white community employs is to take up the Aboriginal understanding of the land as spiritual and scared. Through the act of situating themselves in the primordial space provided by the Australian landscape, as Ainslie Roberts argues, white Australians experience “an uncompetitive harmony with the environment, a depth of root and a sense of the true past” (Hulley, 1988: 139). It is also in doing this, that a physical and psychic connection between the white community and the land can be established, and a sense of emptiness can be cured.

Within this context, the Australian land is often portrayed as a site of healing power, and “the bush heals psychically by offering back to whites the spiritual truths taken from them by the superficial, material pleasures of cities” (Lattas, 2009: 52). In the novel, Hewett foregrounds the healing power that the land possesses by positioning Jessica’s journey of self-awakening in the outback of Australia. Moreover, to give a more vivid illustration of how the metaphorical bush works on the protagonist’s psyche, Hewett portrays an Aboriginal character, Zac Mumbula, as the embodiment of the spiritual bush, who plays the role of a life mentor to her heroine.

In the novel, Zac is the one who saves Jessica after she walks into the sea in a bewitched state. He is also the one who takes Jessica into his humpy (shelter) in the forest and talks her out of her self-resentment, convincing her that it is not bronchial pneumonia that has damaged her, but

because you was a seer, not like most gubbas, who can’t see past the end of their long pointy nose. That’s why you got ill […] you’ve always denied that part of y’self, shut it out so that it’s left y’maimed. (2009: 189)

When Zac talks about “that part of y’self”, he is referring to Jessica’s artistic and intellectual vision of identity and selfhood. By pointing out that Jessica is denying her sensibilities, Zac sees that Jessica is in denial of her ability to speak for herself. Therefore, he takes on the responsibility to encourage and enable Jessica to articulate her desire. In this sense, as noted above, Zac becomes the embodiment of a psychic healing power, whose value lies in his ability to soothe, if not cure, Jessica’s emotional pain. In the same vein, their intercourse in the novel can be interpreted as a romanticized version of the union between nature and the female body, which gives Jessica the sense of being sexually “complete”, and thus ameliorates her feeling of incompleteness caused by the hysterectomy.

Another character worth noting is Oliver Shine, who is cast as an evil spirit, thus providing a stark contrast with Zac. Although this character only appears towards the end of the novel, Oliver’s presence can be sensed through the whole story as he is the one responsible for all the supernatural incidents that happen to Jessica. He is also the one persuading Jessica to commit suicide, which is positioned as a critical comparison with Zac’s relentless effort to urge Jessica to reconcile with her past. The power of destruction that Oliver holds reminds readers of death itself. What is more, his albino appearance intensifies his metaphoric presence because the lack of pigmentation in the skin signifies extreme “white”, which can be easily linked to white settlers’ abuses/seduction or destruction. In this sense, the presence of Oliver Shine and Zac can be read as two opposing forces within Jessica. Connectedly, the fight between Oliver and Jessica is not just a battle reminiscent of the opening line of Hamlet’s soliloquy “To be or not to be”; it is closer to a choice between self-salvation and self-destruction.

Jessica chooses self-salvation in the end, but, again, it should be pointed out that her final decision does not come on a whim. Instead, it comes with the painful shedding process of self-doubt and self-disappointment. Jessica’s change starts from the moment when she is taken in by Zac in his hut, and it is nurtured in the pure spiritual serenity evoked by the quiet bush. With time, she grows to appreciate the quietness of the bush, and the bareness and simplicity of Zac’s hut. Most important of all, she finds a sense of belonging that constantly empowers her even when she leaves the hut:

Once a week she had taken Zac’s books off the makeshift shelves and dusted them. Sometimes she read far into the night, poetry and prose from Afro-Americans, Native Americans and Australian Aborigines. They had given her a new slant on history. She felt she had, in some indefinable way, been changed by them, just as she had been changed by the shack and Zac’s presence in it. (212)

Just as reading Zac’s books gives Jessica a new slant on history, the experience of living in the bush offers her a new perspective to look at herself. Almost immediately, she starts a process of self-reflection, which is implicitly suggested by a mirror scene which is another key convention of the Reifungsroman. For ageing heroines, their images in the mirror are not just reflections of outer appearances, but also a lens through which their womanhood can be closely engaged with. Jessica’s examination starts with her reflecting upon her ageing appearance, and then moves to a deeper level:

Looking at herself critically in the dressing table mirror, she saw a small sunburnt woman with flushed skin, bright green eyes and a mop of sunbleached hair […] the narrow, controlled face, like a golden mask of reserve and suffering, and beneath all this was the personality, self-absorbed, withdrawn, prickly […] a quiet, shy woman subject to bouts of recurring insecurity and depression. (226)

Having accepted who she really is, Jessica does not indulge in remorse and self-pity any more. As she herself affirms, the experience of living in the bush has changed her. She has started to appreciate the quietness and simplicity of the ancient land, and, in doing so, a psychic healing relationship has developed between the land and herself. Consequently, her sense of being “incomplete” has been superseded by her newly discovered enjoyment of sex, and her sense of “unbelonging” is alleviated by self-affirmation.

The Australian bush, it seems, has become a site of “authenticity” for Jessica, where she can express her true desires. As the story comes to an end, we see Jessica once again being visited by Oliver who offers her the chance to acquire the so-called final “emancipation” by committing suicide. However, the “new” Jessica is able to hold her ground this time: “Giving Oliver up. She returned to her sanity. She would take early retirement, she would fly to Rome and live there in relative obscurity” (263). Rome, in the narrative, is not only the place where Jessica could go and live with her daughter, implying the restoration of cross-generational relationships that have been abandoned for years. The city has also become a symbol of another new adventure, highlighting Jessica’s newly developed ability to participate in the full range of life.

That Jessica finally manages to survive Oliver’s wicked plan signifies the completion of her spiritual journey to explore womanhood and thus individual development. By presenting the meandering journey Jessica undertakes, Hewett creates a vivid fictional character of an ageing woman who is looking for new commitment, leaving her readers thought-provoking ideas about how one should exert self-efficacy to make the best use of the later stage of the life-course.

Conclusion

Growing old is an inevitable physical stage that most women have to go through, and it is also a social-psychological process which “raise[s] important questions about the nature of the relationship between the body, the self and society” (Hepworth, 2000: 30). It is this complex and critical process that has been widely ignored and underrepresented in Australian literature. The newly-emerged genre of the Australian Reifungsroman, taking its literary materials from Australian ageing women’s subjective ageing experiences, shows itself as a critical discourse which helps to reshape the well-worn cultural and social paradigms of ageing as decline.

As the representative works of Australian Reifungsromane, Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection challenges the stereotyped representation of ageing women in Australian cultural life through the act of redefining perfection. The novel undermines the deeply entrenched “social norms” assigned by age and gender regimes, asking questions such as “How can ageing women break free from the cultural hierarchy of age and gender?” and “How is it possible to develop a voice that comes from and belongs to ageing women?” Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide continues to engage with these critical questions, whilst introducing the topic of women’s ageing into a wider context. Hewett positions ageing women’s search for personal empowerment within the grand construction of the national quest for a sense of belonging. In so doing, the novel explores alternative futures for ageing women. However, above all, in both novels, we find Waxman’s contention that “at the heart of the Reifungsromane, and the critical discourse that attends it, is the intoxication of pursuing these possibilities through old age into the true ripening of the human spirit” (1990: 188). It is this preoccupation with breaking the stereotypical idea of ageing and reorienting women to newer possibilities, this article argues, that makes the Reifungsroman one of the most instructive literary discourses for exploring how ageing women can be empowered through the construction of a voice of their own.