Notes
Notes introduction 1. Robert Gard, Beyond the Thin Line (Madison, Wis.: Prairie Oak Press, 1992), pp. ix–x. 2. Ibid., pp. 21–23. 3. Peter J. Whitehouse, Konrad Maurer, and Jesse F. Ballenger, eds., Concepts of Alzheimer Disease: Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), p. xi. 4. Benjamin Rush, An Account of the Causes and Indications of Longevity, and of the State of the Body and Mind in Old Age; with Observations on its Diseases, and their Remedies (1793), reprinted as ‘‘On Old Age,’’ in Dagobert V. Runes, Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush (New York: Philosophical Press, 1947); quotations are from Runes, pp. 349, 351; emphasis in original. 5. The history of aging has focused primarily on New England. The situation is much less clear for other regions of the country. 6. Thomas Cole, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), chaps. 3–4; Carole Haber and Brian Gratton, Old Age and the Search for Security: An American Social History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 144–165. 7. The minister was Nathaniel Emmons. His career and this sermon are described by Cole in Journey of Life, pp. 57–66. 8. Ibid., pp. 103–104. Haber and Gratton (Old Age and the Search for Security) do not explicitly discuss the e√ect of Enlightenment ideals on representations of old age, though their discussion of the correspondence between Je√erson and Adams late in their lives regarding old age tends to support Cole’s view. Cole disagrees with the early interpretation of David Hackett Fischer (Growing Old in America [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978]), who argued that the association of old age with hierarchy and privilege which this religious model entailed was shattered in the ideological ferment of the American Revolution. According to Cole, Fischer was not wrong in suggesting that Enlightenment ideals and the democratic spirit of the revolutionary era tended to work against the traditional view of age, but Cole suggests that this was a much more gradual process. Cole, Journey of Life, p. 56, n. 41. 9. In Growing Old in America (pp. 60–67), Fischer described many exceptions to the rule of veneration, which applied most unequivocally to the wealthy and powerful men who 190 notes to pages 5–8 dominated society and ‘‘probably existed within most families where the husband and father was healthy and active’’ (p. 60). The aged poor, especially widows, and aged slaves were more likely to be scorned than venerated. Throughout their Old Age and the Search for Security, Haber and Gratton are admirably sensitive to the way in which race, class, and gender structured the experience of aging throughout American history. 10. Quoted in Haber and Gratton, Old Age and the Search for Security, p. 147. 11. Benjamin Rush, The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush: His ‘‘Travels through Life’’ together with His Commonplace Book for 1789–1813 (Princeton, N.J.: American Philosophical Society, 1948), pp. 215–216. 12. Haber and Gratton’s interpretation of Rush’s text is somewhat at odds with that of Cole, which I am essentially elaborating on here. Primarily concerned with the issue of the status of the elderly rather than the meaning of old age, Haber and Gratton are more impressed with Rush’s prescription for a passive old age than with his connections to Enlightenment and religious ideals that found meaning in the su√ering and loss of old age. Thus, they suggest that ‘‘his view of old age was sentimental at best; in its romanticization, the ideal old age lost power and importance.’’ Rush’s prescription for old age, like that of many other writers and ministers, was passivity. ‘‘Although they possessed no visible infirmities , old men and women would simply come to accept their fate and focus serenely on the passing of life’’ (Haber and Gratton, Old Age and the Search for Security, p. 154). Thus, in Haber and Gratton’s account, Rush was less connected to the tradition of veneration for the aged than to the emergence of ageism in the nineteenth century. The di√erence in these interpretations is essentially one of emphasis. If the issue is the meaning of old age, Rush’s vision of older people as exemplars of patient Christian su√ering is clearly connected to the meaning of old age articulated by the New England clerics. 13. Rush, ‘‘On Old Age,’’ pp. 356–357. 14. Rush was not denying that the elderly were...
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