Hags by Victoria Smith Review

In this passionate memoir-come-manifesto, Victoria Smith analyses the social and political status of older women.

Her own, and others’, personal reflections on age and ageing are scaffolded by the writings of academics and authors before her. She pulls from autobiographical texts and feminist literature in equal measure.

The position of the older women, she says, is a paradox. They occupy the space of a woman but possess few or none of the traits associated with womanhood. Menopause is the cancellation of the only ‘important’ female functions – attracting, stimulating, gratifying and nurturing men and/or children. Their woman-body, something that once defined them and dictated their role in society as a woman no longer ‘exists’. They find they have exhausted their currency in the sexual marketplace, something they may realize they once didn't notice they had. Despite being objectified, they were, to an extent, dismissed less in the way they are now. Having served their ‘purpose’ the middle-aged women become invisible – why are you still here?

In this ‘freedom’, they are no longer objectified, but simultaneously, when exercising these freedoms, they are criticised or stereotyped for them. The witch, the hag, and the Karen are all archetypes of older women that embody traits that come with age, such as self-assuredness, being less reflexively apologetic, and lacking reliance on men. These are dangerous and unpalatable characteristics, particularly in someone no longer in the sexual marketplace.

The older women, because of these factors, Smith argues, become a canvas for misogyny a repository of female inferiority, bigotry, failure, and ugliness. As Smith puts it, ‘men who hate older women hate all women’, they just find it useful to grant younger women a reprieve, because the younger women can spend their sexual marketplace currency on them.

This is tied up with the figure of the unbearable, slow, nagging, hormonal (insert any negative misogynistic trait) mother-in-law or mother – the butt of family or stand-up comedy jokes, and communal eye rolls.

It reminds me of a quote by author Bonnie Burstow: Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not as bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.

But the older women wishing to protect and speak out, even for the younger generation is met with hostility. Taking for example Mums Net, Smith shows the distain and infantilisation of groups of women getting together and being concerned or discussing anything other than men. It is reduced to 'gossip' or immature nitpicking, overbearing and pedantic. 

On matters of sexual exploitation, she is viewed as jealous, taking away the younger woman’s sexual agency because she has no choice but to observe the sexual marketplace from without.

Smith also reflects on the idea of ageing as a concept uncomfortable for everyone, she asks ‘what does it mean to move through the world as a woman who has aged beyond how she might imagine her true self to appear?’ This is hard to imagine for anyone, particularly younger women who may accept they may age, and become older, but not like her. We will do things differently, resist the stereotypes that older women fall into, because we are more educated, will not succumb to stereotypes, and will not ‘let ourselves go.’ But all these are perceptions externally imposed on us, out of our control. Smith says, ‘The takeaway from fairy tales is perhaps you are not hated because you are an old woman, but because you have failed to remain a young one’. The older woman is the ‘other within us.’ The younger woman believes that older women are not structurally oppressed, they are just failing at delegation, inarticulate, that they are the enforcers rather than the victims of issues. 

They are seen as less wise than they were as their younger self. In this perceived regression lies the paradox.