The micropolitics of elder care in Memento Mori, Diary of a Good Neighbor, and A Taste for Death.
Using three novels--Muriel Spark's Memento Mori, Doris Lessing's Diary of a Good Neighbor, and P. D. James' A Taste for Death--we examine themes relating to the social construction of caregiving. In our reading of the stories we found numerous instances of the political in the personal, and of how care can be shaped by inequalities of class and gender, by organizational practices and attitudes rooted in cultural assumptions, and by the social idealization of care provided by relatives and friends.
College of Associated Health Professions, University of Illinois at Chicago 60612.
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England
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Ganzer
D000368:Aged; D001293:Attitude to Death; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D017281:Cost of Illness; D005260:Female; D016330:Frail Elderly / Q000523:psychology*; D006299:Health Services for the Aged; D006701:Home Nursing / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008093:Literature, Modern; D008297:Male; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D011057:Politics