Introduction
In 1997, prominent age critic Margaret Gullette wrote in her seminal work Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife that “the future depends on men too recognizing that they are subject to culture” (150). Gullette contended that to dismantle age and gender ideologies, men must first comprehend how these narratives constrain and disadvantage them as well. Only age consciousness, the author claimed, can lead to resistance (156). In the last few years, age scholars have displayed a growing interest in men’s aging experiences and in how masculinities “interact with other power relations to construct old age” (Calasanti 307).
The present article aims to contribute to this research by turning to literature as a vehicle of cultural transmission that both encodes and challenges dominant views of male aging. It will focus specifically on the novel Simon’s Night (1979), by American author Jon Hassler, who is often described as a regional writer due to his depictions of the Minnesotan landscape and people. Even though aging is a recurrent theme in Hassler’s work, literary scholars have mostly focused on representations of Midwestern identity, religion and spirituality in his novels (Lange; Block). This article will add an age studies perspective to existing critical discussions of Hassler’s work by addressing the topics of aging, masculinities and confinement in a nursing home in Simon’s Night.
The novel tells the story of an older man grappling with his own decision of moving to long-term residential care. In modern industrialized societies, transitioning to a care home in old age is often seen as “tantamount to giving up on existence as an independent moral, emotional or physical being” (Chivers 135). Late life institutionalization has become a symbol of collective fears of old age as a time of loss and disengagement. Simon’s Night taps into these apprehensions by depicting the protagonist’s efforts to redefine himself within the institution, illuminating the complexities of negotiating identity in the face of diminished independence. The goal of this study is to answer the following question: How does Simon’s Night envision the impact of institutionalization on masculine identities and, extensively, how does it engage with discourses of hegemonic masculinity that are based on norms of youth and middle age?
In order to answer this question, the article has been divided into three sections. The first delves into current scholarly discussions about the intersections of age and masculinities. It sheds light on the gender-specific ways that men are disadvantaged by old age and considers how Simon’s Night portrays these realities. The second section focuses on the novel’s representation of the nursing home setting and on the connection that is established in the narrative between loss of independence and feelings of diminished masculinity. Finally, the article discusses the strategies developed by the novel’s protagonist, Simon, to reclaim his autonomy and to reenact hegemonic ideals of masculinity. This section argues that Simon’s nursing home escape and his decision to break from retirement signal his return to the activities that defined him in middle age and, extensively, his compliance with the norms of successful aging.
Simon’s critical interrogation of the decline narratives that he grew to accept as absolute truths, and his return to the performative practices that defined his identity prior to retirement illustrate the principles of positive aging theories. As this article will show, Simon’s Night (1979) exemplifies both the “good intentions” (Calasanti and King 6) and the main shortcomings of progress narratives of aging. On the one hand, it emphasizes agency in old age and negates stereotypes of older people as incompetent. On the other, it imposes a prescriptive view of activity and independence in late life that is based on midlife norms, excluding the possibility of more creative responses to the challenges of growing older. The current study will highlight these aspects of the novel’s approach to identity in old age and ponder over literature’s role in both endorsing and questioning gender norms and dominant age ideologies.
1. Aging Masculinities in Theory
This section brings together perspectives from the fields of age and gender studies with the purpose of understanding how masculine identities are accomplished in everyday social practices and how age informs these practices, as illustrated in Simon’s Night. This topic has garnered the attention of researchers working at the intersections between aging and gender studies in the last few years, countering a longer tradition in feminist gerontology of focusing almost exclusively on the aging experiences of women (Calisanti 2004). Scholars like Kathleen Woodward have argued that the power structures currently in place in Western societies marginalize older women with increased severity, “in terms of social opportunities and resources” (16). However, these studies often neglect the gender-specific challenges that are faced by older men. To tackle this gap, some age researchers and feminist gerontologists have expanded their inquiry to aging masculinities and cultural representations of older male characters (Silver; Calasanti; Marshall; Thompson Jr.; Hobbs; Armengol, Aging Masculinities; Hartung et. al; Tracy and Schrage-Früh). This shift recognizes the premise that “older men are just as gendered as older women” (Hearn and Wray 206).
Discussing aging masculinities presupposes acknowledging that masculinities are not only culturally constructed, but also ‘multiple’ and ‘fluid’ (Connell and Messerschmidt 836). Bartholomaeus and Tarrant argue “that individual boys/men can move between different discourses” (354) of masculinity and that the usage of the term “hegemonic masculinity” itself is fraught with ambiguities. Distinct models of manhood can dominate at different times, places, and circumstances, depending on the socio-cultural contexts within which they emerge. Several paradigms of idealized masculinities circulate in modern societies, “exalted by churches, narrated by mass media, or celebrated by the state” (Connell and Messerschmidt 838). In a social environment where physicality plays a prominent role in defining manhood, the intellectual prowess of a white college professor, such as the protagonist of Simon’s Night, may not be considered “the most honored way of being a man” (832), especially when compared to the muscular strength of a farmer. Understandings of what a desirable masculinity looks like in everyday practice are therefore relative and variable, as dominant constructs of masculine identities come into contact every day, challenging and disrupting one another.
Age is one of the factors that informs these ever-shifting hierarchies of masculinities. In her essay on how the theoretical framework underlying feminist gerontology may be applied to the study of older men, Toni Calasanti posits that “age relations shape manhood such that old men are often depicted as ‘other’, even those who may be able to approach hegemonic masculinity” (307). Ageist stereotypes often rely on ideas of aging as decline and loss, which set older men apart from masculine ideals. When aging-into-old-age is accompanied by illness and loss of independence, as is the case with the characters in Simon’s Night, men’s ability to achieve hegemonic standards of manhood may be even further jeopardized. A prominent reason why older men—and specifically dependent older men—are often excluded from discourses of hegemonic masculinity is because these models are premised on certain idealized body-based characteristics. Physical strength, endurance, and sexual vigour are all traits associated with masculine power which, according to dominant age discourses, come under threat with advanced age. Alex Hobbs suggests that, as a consequence, older men often see their masculinity being called into question and experience a loss of power and social status (xvi). Leni Marshall describes this process as a form of “social degendering” (157) that accompanies aging and that disadvantages both men and women, albeit in different ways. According to Marshall, just like women are perceived as ‘less feminine’ in their post-reproductive years, men too are deemed ‘less masculine’ when their bodies are no longer able to perform “potently” (35).
Culturally pervasive ideas of aging as decline therefore position older men in subordinate positions within hierarchies of masculinities, reflecting their perceived loss of competence and muscular power (Bartholomaeus and Tarrant 355–356). However, aging experiences are not homogenous and the intersection of age and gender with other social categorizations such as class, race and sexual orientation further complicates the process of understanding the systems of power and privilege that shape men’s lives in old age. Simon’s Night renders these nuances visible, as it explores the challenges of aging and confinement in a nursing home that are faced not only by Simon, but also by a Native-American resident, called Smalleye. The parallels and the disparities between Simon and Smalleye’s experiences show the different roles that white and non-white men often play in cultural imaginaries of old age and the impact of racial inequities on life in a nursing home.
Another aspect concerning aging and masculinities that is addressed in the novel is the importance assigned to work in defining models of manhood. As Hobbs suggests, “masculinity is interpreted as a physical realm based on activity as well as appearance” (xv). This means that retirement can be a particularly disruptive event in the life of an older man, signifying loss of income, status, and public recognition and potentially even impacting the older subject’s sense of worth (Silver 387). Third age cultures and anti-aging campaigns prescribe solutions to these challenges, encouraging older subjects to stay socially engaged and to fight any visible signs of age-related changes. Proliferating images of busy, happy and fit older people in the media and popular culture reinforce the idea that if older men manage to successfully emulate youthfulness and perform as competent and capable bodies, they may hope to retain their power and status even as they age.
Despite its emphasis on agency and choice, the successful aging paradigm is predicated upon an intrinsically ableist view of old age that serves a privileged minority, comprised mostly of white, wealthy, and physically apt men, who have the financial means and are healthy enough to live up to its standards. Simon’s Night focuses on those who are pushed to the margins of this discourse. Individuals who are in a situation of dependency, like the residents of the nursing home portrayed in the novel, are among those who are perceived as having ‘failed’ at aging due to their inability to remain autonomous. Simon’s changing attitudes towards what it means to grow old in a fulfilling way reflect the cultural force of both decline narratives and positive aging theories. The protagonist, as will be explored in the following sections of the article, is faced with the challenge of renegotiating his identity after a series of age-related experiences. Occasional memory lapses, loss of the ability to drive and the move to a nursing home are portrayed in the novel as signs of diminished competence and physical deterioration, forcing him to readjust his perceptions of himself as he can no longer live up to hegemonic ideals of masculinity.
Simon’s attempts to reframe his identity in constructive and meaningful ways after moving to the nursing home epitomizes the challenges faced by older men in societies where successful aging ideology aligns with cultural myths of individualism and self-reliance, as is the case in the American context. Age and gender scholars have examined how men may subvert gender expectations in old age to create “new paradigm[s] of ‘self-in-world’” (Hobbs xviii). These critical inquiries have raised questions such as whether it is possible for age-related changes, including retirement, to be incorporated into more flexible and fluid identities that counter hegemonic ideals of masculinity and whether retirement can provide opportunities for older men to explore alternative models of manhood based on practices of care, interdependence, and intergenerational contact.
Contemporary American literature has also addressed these questions, exploring the complexities of negotiating masculine identities across the life-course. Authors such as John Updike, Jonathan Franzen, Philip Roth, Ernest J. Gaines, Paul Auster, among others, have tackled this subject (Hobbs; Armengol, Aging Masculinities), creating nuanced portraits of old age and relying on male protagonists who both reinforce and dispute dominant cultural expectations of aging. Simon’s Night adds to this tradition by questioning how the transition to a nursing home in late life, with the accompanying loss of freedom and independence, may disrupt masculine identities. The present article will consider how Hassler’s novel tackles this issue and how it envisions the different variables that influence men’s responses to the challenges and opportunities of growing older.
Having established the contestable nature of masculinities and other gender practices, as well as the middle-aged biases that underlie hegemonic ideals of manhood, it is now possible to explore in greater detail how this theme emerges in Simon’s Night. The following section will focus on the novel’s depiction of late life institutionalization and its influence on men’s position in relation to discourses of hegemonic masculinity. This part of the article will consider how the older male characters in the novel either internalize or transgress age ideologies and masculine ideals, highlighting how these attitudes towards age and gender norms shape their identities in the nursing home.
2. “A Premature Death”: Masculinities and the ‘Nursing Home Specter’
Simon’s Night depicts the transition to the nursing home as the main reason behind its protagonist’s apparent identity crisis. Understanding how loss of independence and life in an institutional environment impact Simon’s self-perception will shed light on how the novel positions itself in relation to dominant discourses of age and gender.
One of the socially pervasive narratives that the novel engages with is the notion that the nursing home is a kind of existential limbo, where older people are abandoned by their relatives and left to die. In 1993, Betty Friedan used the term “nursing home specter” to refer to this collective anxiety surrounding the prospect of institutionalization in old age, describing care homes as “death sentences, the final interment from which there is no exit but death” (478). Representations of care home spaces in popular culture are often characterized by images of dystopian, oppressive institutions, where overbearing caregivers and administrators neglect, overmedicate and abuse their residents. The recurrence of this trope conveys the idea that moving to long-term residential care is the worst possible outcome for anyone facing an illness or disability in late life.
With the rise of third age cultures and the mounting pressure exerted on older subjects to remain active and independent, nursing homes also came to be perceived as signs of “a failure to age well” (Chivers 134). In the United States, where positive aging ideologies are supported by culturally pervasive myths like self-reliance (Cruikshank 10), late life institutionalization carries particularly stigmatizing meanings. This moralizing view of the nursing home as a symbol of all the facets of aging that older subjects should strive to avoid, such as loss of independence and cognitive abilities, is encoded into the narrative structure of Simon’s Night. The novel begins with Simon’s account of the events that led to his decision to enter the Norman Home and finishes with the protagonist’s reflections on why this transition turned out to be a mistake. The structural division of the narrative into chapters, each one corresponding to one day of the week, tracks the gradual transformation of the protagonist’s attitudes towards late life, from declinist views of aging to the successful aging paradigm.
Simon’s evolution, from an adamant rule-follower who accepts loss and disengagement as inevitable facets of old age to an empowered nursing home escapee is conceived as an ascension, and images of upward and downward movements are recurrent throughout the narrative. The protagonist begins his journey in the low prairies of Ithaca Mills, Minnesota, at the Norman Home, and climbs to the top of a hill in Rookery by the end of the narrative. This ascent occurs as a consequence of his return to his private cottage, as he decides to leave the nursing home and reclaim his independence. At the institution, Simon expresses disdain for the prairie, arguing that it offers an overly extensive view of the surrounding landscape, making him feel “puny” (Hassler 304). He always preferred “high places” (225), like the hills surrounding his home, because seeing the world from above helped him in the process of making important decisions.
Simon’s Catholicism seems to guide most of his life-choices and assigns this recurrent image of ascension with Christian symbolism, framing his upward transition from the Norman Home to his private residence as a form of resurrection. The characterization of the “dark” and “dry” (86) prairies, as focalized by Simon, evokes images of death and sterility, casting the flatlands as a metaphorical landscape of age. The Badbattle river, according to the narrator, “leaped and splashed and sounded like laughter” in front of his cottage in the hills, but “fattened and slowed like a man full of age” (13) as it reached the prairie. The contrast between the two sections of the Badbattle is established through a life-course analogy. The verbs used to describe the stream up in the mountains conjure up the image of a joyful infant, reflecting romanticized ideas of childhood as a time of innocence, freedom and happiness. On the other hand, at its last stages, the Badbattle is compared to a frail old man, who has lost the strength and vitality of his youth. This description of the river conveys Simon’s own declinist views of aging in the initial sections of the narrative. The protagonist enters the Norman Home believing that, like the Badbattle, he too is on a downward slope, slowly but steadily degenerating towards his demise.
Simon’s bleak views of his own aging process are based on a series of mishaps that lead to a fire in his kitchen and the loss of his car. The protagonist regards these incidents as confirmation of his theory that “at seventy-six you get stupid” and “want the bothersome details of life taken care of for you. You want to be told what to eat, when and where to fall asleep” (246). Having no family left apart from his estranged wife, moving to a nursing home seems like the logical choice for Simon. Even though the conversations at the dinner table are “deadening” (8), he listens patiently to his fellow residents because he believes “that when he was born into the human race he had somehow given his tacit approval to this arrangement whereby he would … sicken and die to the sound of mumbling strangers” (8–9). Simon’s conviction that withering away in a nursing home is an inescapable fate shows the extent to which he has been socialized into age ideology. From his point of view, aging into old age is an identity-shedding process of loss and renunciation and being human demands accepting this narrative as an absolute fact. His descent from the hills surrounding his cabin to the flatlands where the Norman Home is located therefore symbolizes his belief in his own physical and cognitive decline.
Even though Simon renounces his independence voluntarily, he never adjusts to life in the Norman Home. Throughout the novel, it is suggested that the protagonist’s decline, contrary to his own belief, begins with his transition to the nursing home rather than with the accidents which motivated him to leave his cottage in the first place. The older subjects who reside at the Norman Home seem to conform to the stereotypes of confused and deranged nursing home residents. They are reduced to ageist caricatures and described as self-absorbed “over-the-hill-has-beens” (266), who spend their days indolently watching television or repeating stories of their youth. This emphasizes the potentially destructive impact of confinement in an institutional residence on the older subjects’ ability to maintain and negotiate self-identity.
The older men in particular struggle to preserve their identities, clinging to the aspects of their gendered selves that connect them to the past. Sitting at the men’s table with his two male companions Hatch and Smalleye, Simon listens to their stories about the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the hardships of country life. Both men, in their youth and middle age, embody rural masculinities. This is characterized by physical strength, hard work, and resilience in the face of harsh natural conditions. Old age and the transition to the nursing home force Hatch and Smalleye to give up the sometimes violent and physically demanding social practices that defined their masculine identities at a younger age. At the dinner table they mourn the loss of the freedom and the ability to carry out these activities. Hatch fondly remembers the days of cutting timber on his farm, and even talks nostalgically about the slivers and calluses on his hands after a day’s work (276). Smalleye also expresses his determination to resume his hobby of hunting geese, as “he never knew a man worth his salt who didn’t shoot at least one goose a year” (41). This focus on the physically performative aspects of the characters’ identities underscores action, risk and freedom as constitutive elements of American rural masculinities. According to Jo Little, rural masculinities are accomplished, per excellence, in outdoor work and are “underpinned by ideas of dominating nature and conquering the landscape” (189). Confinement in a nursing home deviates from Hatch and Smalleye’s ideas of what it means to be a man. Deprived of the ability and opportunity to display their physical prowess and strength, the older men spend their time at the Norman Home romanticizing the past and reminiscing about the days when they enacted hegemonic practices of masculinity.
The experience of aging in a nursing home is especially alienating for Smalleye, who is reduced to his racialized identity within the walls of the institution. Known simply as “the Indian”, Smalleye “seemed the least at home” (Hassler 5), although he was the first of the six residents to enter the Norman Home. Placed in the institution by his daughter Tess after she marries a white man, Smalleye resents Tess for leaving him in the Norman Home so that she could pursue what he considers to be her “only ambition in the world” (60): becoming white. All three male residents perceive loss of independence and the transition to the nursing home as contrary to their masculine ideals. However, for Smalleye, placement in a white institution is also a continuation of his forced, life-long assimilation into white culture. Unlike the other care home residents, Smalleye has been racialized throughout his entire life. At the Norman Home, where he is the only non-white resident, his body continues to be reduced to a sign of racial difference. This form of marginalization within the home strips him of his individuality, while the homogenizing force of institutional rules suppresses his cultural identity.
The Norman Home is thus portrayed as an existential limbo, where the older subjects shed the last remnants of their identities. The oppressive power exerted by Hattie over the residents reinforces the stereotype of the nursing home “as a prison-like institution” (Kriebernegg 255), where the inmates are deprived of their autonomy and turned into indolent automatons. The power dynamics established between Hattie and the residents is represented in the characters’ physicality, which reinforces discourses of frailty that associate agedness with helplessness and vulnerability (Higgs and Gilleard viii). Hattie is described as a “stout, freckled woman of fifty”, who runs the Home “with a reckless efficiency and a voice like a hungry steer” (Hassler 9). Her imposing presence reflects her powerful status within the institution. This characterization creates an image of robustness, strength, and vigour that is associated in traditional gender discourses with the physical realm of masculinity. Conversely, Simon’s description in the first section of the novel suggests that aging has demasculinized his body: “he had always been lean, but now his flesh seemed to be getting away from him, seemed to be eroding from his arms and legs and piling itself up around his middle” (15). The emphasis placed on Simon’s thin limbs and flaccid breasts encodes notions of fragility and body degeneration typical of declinist approaches to aging. The protagonist interprets these age-related changes to his physique as signs of feminization, comparing his ankles to “those of a young girl” (15). In a cultural context where idealized men’s bodies are expected to be muscular, firm, and active, signifying social dominance as well as physical prowess, the potential loss of these attributes throughout the aging process is associated with “a reduction to the status of less than men” (Calasanti and King 16), implying decreased agency and power.
Simon’s self-image therefore reflects his perception that aging has not only cost him access to his previous hegemonic status but has also emasculated him. He is especially “mortified” (Hassler 16) at the thought of revealing his aged body to his young female doctor, Jean Kirk. Simon is aware that his body deviates from aesthetic ideals and he is ashamed of showing it to a younger woman. From the protagonist’s point of view, the female gaze has potentially castrating power. This highlights the role of relationality in shaping and disrupting masculine identities. It is in his interactions with Hattie and Dr. Kirk that Simon’s vulnerability and sense of loss become apparent.
Confinement in the nursing home is the main factor in activating Simon’s decline. This reinforces the idea that loss of independence is the ultimate threat against masculine identities in late life. The use of flashbacks to Simon’s youth and middle age throughout this section of the novel confirms that reality. Simon’s recollections disclose moments where he felt disempowered and even emasculated and create parallels between his past and his present experiences of institutionalization and loss of freedom under Hattie’s rule. Simon’s memories reveal that, as a young man, he often deviated from ideals of ‘traditional masculinity’. Throughout his life, his masculine identity remains inconspicuous, only “visible because of its perceived absence” (Reeser 1). Deeply religious and committed to his faith, Simon led a life of quiet contemplation and at times self-denial, traits that his wife Barbara considers “odd in a man” (Hassler 163). Simon’s deviance from conventionally masculine characteristics drives Barbara to leave him for someone else. She describes her lover as a man defined by “brute strength”, “passion”, and “anger”, in short, the “opposite” of Simon (164).
After being called “a windy old bird” (27) at the doctor’s office, Simon recalls an equally humiliating moment from his youth when he failed the physical examination to enter the military. This prevents him from participating in the First World War. Being declared unfit to serve leaves Simon feeling “wretched and unworthy” (35) and prompts him to depart from his hometown to restart his life elsewhere. Once again, Simon fails to meet dominant standards of manhood, in this case because he does not achieve his goal of joining the troops. In a cultural and political context where the figure of the soldier personifies nationally celebrated virtues such as patriotism and self-sacrifice, being rejected by the army leaves Simon feeling like he is incapable of living up to society’s expectations.
The protagonist’s memories of ‘failed manhood’ reflect his present feelings of inadequacy. However, they also reveal a pattern: that moments of defeat and rejection in his life are always followed by moments of healing. He recalls, for example, how being dismissed from the military led him to invest in his education to become a college Professor (35). Ironically, Simon’s reflections on adverse experiences from his past are also a source of hope. They remind him that the age-related changes he is experiencing do not necessarily signify irreversible decline and diminished manhood. Old age may bring new opportunities for growth and transformation, just like exclusion from the military had offered him a chance to explore alternative forms of hegemonic masculinity. By pursuing an academic career, Simon continued to participate in dominant discourses of masculinity, exhibiting that which Redman and Mac an Ghaill would describe as “muscular intellectualness” (24), in other words, intellectual—rather than physical—prowess. The implicit connection between Simon’s past and present suggests that he can once again reclaim his masculinity if he overcomes the incidents that have recently “wounded his pride” (Hassler 35), such as the kitchen fire and the loss of his car. The flashbacks from Simon’s earlier life and the emphasis on his resilience when faced with adversity offer crucial insights into Simon’s character and inform the protagonist’s physical and psychological journey in the novel’s second part.
After meeting Simon for the first time, Dr. Jean Kirk also voices her opinion that he has given up on his life prematurely, presaging his escape from the nursing home. She believes that Simon is “the only man in Ithaca Mills … capable of carrying on an intelligent conversation” and that he “has to be talked into leaving” the Norman Home. She does not understand why Simon renounced his independence “at the height of his esteem” (161) and thinks that he might still save himself from learned helplessness and decline if he deconstructs his own internalized ageism. Simon’s wit and self-awareness confirm Jean’s theory. His lucid, critical reading of his environment stands in contrast to the lethargy and confusion that defines the cognitive state of the other residents. Unlike them, the protagonist merely performs his age or, more exactly, he behaves in accordance with his own expectations of what being his age means and entails. He disdains the “clogged ideas” and “asinine assumptions” (8) that his fellow residents exchange at the dinner table but forces himself to participate in these conversations anyway. He believes that it is his duty to listen to their monologues, even though he finds them “stupefying” (4). These contradictions betray Simon’s cognitive dissonance about what it means to grow old. There is an inconsistency between his expectations of old age and his actual experience of it. He regards late life as a period of loss and decline, but his mental acuity refutes his own bias.
These oscillations between Simon’s feelings of dejection and personal defeat and his displays of alertness, agency and self-control punctuate the novel’s first part, foreshadowing his transformative fate in the narrative’s conclusion. Simon’s Night suggests that confinement in a nursing home is a dangerous threshold for an older man to cross, a turning point in his ability to maintain a sense of individuality and perform dominant forms of masculinity. Simon’s escape from the Norman Home is therefore an act of resistance and self-affirmation that sets him apart from the other residents. The following section of this article explores the age and gender ideologies encoded in the protagonist’s journey of emancipation and the limitations of the novel’s message of hope.
3. “The Champions of Life”: Resisting Decline and Reclaiming Autonomy
The opening section of Simon’s Night follows the conventions of decline narratives of aging. However, as the novel progresses, Simon’s story is reframed as one of empowerment and triumph over adversity, consistent with positive aging theories. As will be seen in the present section of this article, the novel shows the contradictions that lie at the heart of active aging narratives and their reliance on static and prescriptive views of manhood in late life.
Simon’s changing attitudes towards old age propel the narrative forward. Unlike his fellow residents at the Norman Home, who exhibit signs of disengagement and mental confusion, features traditionally associated with the ‘real old’, the protagonist is portrayed throughout the novel as a case of “self-imposed senility” (167). His decision to leave the Norman Home and reclaim his autonomy is inspired by the equally transgressive actions of Smalleye, the only other “champion of life” (265) at the institution. Smalleye and Simon ‘decline to decline’ (Gullette) by resisting the inertia forced upon them by Hattie and the institutional system. While Smalleye resumes his goose-shooting hobby, Simon starts driving and writing again, all performative practices, which define their identities prior to their transition to the nursing home.
In contrast to Simon, Smalleye fails to escape institutional life, despite his attempt to assert his independence from Hattie’s control. Stealing back his rifle from his family home, Smalleye climbs the rooftop of the Norman Home to shoot at geese. Simon considers this to be “the most sensible act ever performed by a resident” (Hassler 275) at the home, even though it nearly costs Smalleye his life. The apparent contradiction between the risk and violence underlying Smalleye’s act of defiance and Simon’s description of it as ‘sensible’ reveals the value socially assigned to individualism, diligence and audacity and their connection to ideal models of manhood. Within the ideological framework of normative masculinities, Smalleye’s remarkable demonstration of courage and vitality is virtuous. From Simon’s point of view, Smalleye’s goal was “to prove to himself that he wasn’t aimless and lazy and good-for-nothing” (276). This remark implies that there is a moral dimension to Smalleye’s rebellious actions and that staying busy in later life is an ethical as well as a health-related choice. Simon’s opinion of Smalleye’s behaviour shows his renewed belief in the idea that continuous activity is a condition for ‘aging well’. In returning to his old hobby, Smalleye resists the homogenizing force of institutional life, which threatens to suppress his individuality and those aspects linked to his cultural identity.
Smalleye’s reliance on reenacting identity practices from his youth and middle age to assert his individuality offers little hope regarding his ability to respond creatively to the challenges of old age. This is made even less likely by the fact that he has no prospect of ever evading the nursing home. Smalleye loses his room at the Norman Home when he is taken to the hospital to recover from the injuries caused by his fall from the roof. However, Simon’s departure from the institution at the end of the novel suggests that a new vacancy is open for Smalleye to return. Knowing that his daughter will take advantage of this opportunity to once again admit him into the Norman Home, Smalleye reaffirms his commitment to challenging Hattie’s authority once he is back in the institution. He tells Simon that he intends on “shoot[ing] from the balcony next time” (308). Despite his resilience, Smalleye is ensnared by his destiny. He engages continuously in the perilous activities that connect him to his past as a strategy to resist Hattie’s strict rules, the threat of cultural assimilation and the specter of decline. Yet, he is unable to change his situation and can expect little more than to become a martyr of freedom in the Norman Home. The hopelessness of his circumstances thus reinforces the ‘nursing home specter’.
Conversely, Simon embarks on a journey that prompts him to assign new meaning to his aging process, based on the self-knowledge that he acquires throughout his adventure. Departing from Ithaca Mills to retrieve his car in Saint Paul, Simon spends one day and one night away from the nursing home, which eventually inspires his decision to leave the institution permanently. The car, the object of the quest, signifies his determination to resist the inertia forced upon him by the institutional system, as well as his new understanding of aging as movement and self-sufficiency. From a life-course perspective, the act of retrieving the car has symbolic meaning. According to Margaret Cruikshank, loss of the ability to drive is “an informal rite of passage to the next life stage, in which autonomy, self-reliance, and freedom from interference are all threatened” (11). This event may be particularly distressing for men, since “masculinity has traditionally been defined as individualistic and self-reliant” (Armengol, “Aging as emasculation?” 364). The act of reclaiming his car hence signifies Simon’s return to hegemonic gender practices and to a lifestyle associated with the successful paradigm of aging. Cotten Seiler argues that automobility, especially in the Cold War era, provided “a quotidian performance of both autonomous self-direction and acquiescence to systemic parameters. To drive, in other words, was to live motion without change” (104). Simon’s Night endorses this idea. Driving allows Simon to reassert himself as an autonomous individual, but it also reflects his conformity to pervasive gender and age ideologies. By getting back in the driver’s seat of his car, he performs the idealized subjectivity of American liberalism, choosing to uphold the principles of freedom and independence that constitute traditional norms of masculinity. In Simon’s Night’s cartography of old age, the Norman Home is thus construed as a place of finitude, signifying a dependent and undesirable old age, in opposition to Simon’s vehicle, which signals emancipation and the promise of a fresh start. In Dr. Kirk’s words, the recovery of the car is “the first step” in the protagonist’s revitalization, because he “can use it to drive away from the Norman Home for good” (Hassler 122).
Olympus shopping mall is another important place in the map of old age proposed by the novel. This is where Simon waits for his car to be returned from the repair shop. This setting plays a defining role in Simon’s journey of self-discovery and is laden with symbolic imagery. At this celestial limbo, a parallel is established between the repair work on his car and the healing process that he endures as he waits for his vehicle to “come alive” (177). While the mechanics, who Simon describes as “the oracles and prophets of our time” (177), fix the car, he too finds the answers for his anxieties about death and old age through a series of interpersonal interactions that take him across the “joys and sorrows” (265) of other people’s lives, forcing him to confront the lethargy that has recently defined his own. Three different people approach Simon and share with him the most recent and dramatic events of their lives, involving birth, marriage and death. Through these accounts, the protagonist experiences vicariously “the high emotions” (265) that he associates with a full life. This leads him to a “revelation”: that “Jean Kirk was right, the Norman Home was … wrong for anyone who had more life to live” (265).
Simon’s second-hand encounters with these three life-defining moments are sequenced in reverse to their actual order in the life course. The first person to approach him shares with him his feelings of grief over his mother’s death, while the last person tells him about the birth of her grandchild. This reflects Simon’s own inverted journey from a premature acceptance of death, “a kind of premeditated decline” (309), to a metaphorical rebirth, as he awakens to the possibilities of old age. Following these casual interactions with strangers, he realizes that he has forced upon himself a culturally ingrained and restrictive narrative of old age, which fails to account for the richness and complexity of his own aging experience. For the first time, he questions his own assumption that old age is “an intermediate form of existence between life and death, like sleep” (309). Listening to other people’s exciting stories leads Simon to the conclusion that there is no intermediate existence: “short of death, there’s no alternative but life” (307). In leaving the Norman Home in the low prairies of Ithaca Mills, he escapes the symbolic ‘valley of the shadow of death’ and rises—both literally and figuratively—to reclaim his vitality at Olympus. Like the Greek Gods, he too adopts a privileged, overhead and divine-like view of his life, by contemplating mortality and the circularity of human existence.
As he drives back to Ithaca Mills, Simon sheds his customary placidity and finds a new “zest for life” (266). His journey of empowerment culminates with his decision to leave the Norman Home, return to his cabin with Barbara, and write his memoirs. This indicates a readjustment in Simon’s understanding of identity across the life-course. His initial belief in a static self, eroded by the successive debasements of bodily and mental decline gives way to a more flexible view of identity. He leaves Olympus with a new perception of identity as both continuous—grounded in consistent patterns of thought and behaviour—, and performative, realized through everyday practices and relationships. This applies equally to the gender aspects of his identity. Throughout his life, he fluctuates between enacting hegemonic practices and deviating from them. His return to activities that defined his masculinity prior to his move to the nursing home, such as driving, writing and tutoring, shows his ongoing attempts to accomplish idealized forms of manhood.
Simon’s triumph over decline provides a hopeful conclusion to the novel. However, this narrative of apparent ‘progress’ is built upon fragile ground. Simon’s strategy of continuously seeking new goals to keep decline at bay does not ensure long-term sustainability. Simon finds purpose in his later years, overcoming his feelings of hopelessness and conformism. Yet, his masculine identity remains largely shaped by hegemonic norms, like individualism, work and self-reliance. His occupation—writing and publishing his memoirs and literary reviews—is partially a continuation of the intellectual pursuits that sustained his social status in middle age. This raises the question of how the protagonist will renegotiate his masculine identity when his fantasy of an ageless self collapses. If Simon’s ‘successful aging’ depends on his continuous ability to drive and write, how would the protagonist readjust his sense of self if his body ‘betrayed’ him? What if his occasional memory lapses increased in frequency, instead of vanishing altogether, as seems to happen at the end of the novel? What happens when Simon is no longer able to “grow older without aging” (Katz 188)? These questions remain unaddressed in the narrative, reflecting the illusory and transitory nature of Simon’s ‘victory’.
Simon does not seem to be plagued by these anxieties and his journey throughout the novel is construed as a narrative of redemption with religious undertones. The protagonist’s metaphorical resurrection at the end of the novel takes him to the heights of Olympus on a Friday, and to the comfort of his private home at Rookery Hill on a Sunday, following the chronology of Christ’s death and ascension. This symbolic return to life is aestheticized not only in the transition between different landscapes, but also in the changing meteorological phenomena, which frame his journey. The long period of drought, which had become the main topic of conversation at the Norman Home comes to an end on the day of Simon’s departure from the institution, and is replaced by abundant rain, “as unbidden and broad as the hope for good harvest” (Hassler 312), signifying renewal and the conclusion of a period of hopelessness and sterility in the protagonist’s life. The novel ends with Simon’s return to his cottage, denying the reader access to the experiences and potential challenges that await him in the subsequent years of his life. Nevertheless, the opening sentences of his memoirs, written “with scarcely a moment’s hesitation” (311) suggest the onset of a new creative and prolific phase in the protagonist’s life.
This allusive imagery, indicating rebirth, ascribes Simon with a messianic quality. It frames him as a chosen prophet whose life-course appears at all stages to be guided by divine intervention and imbued with transcendental meaning. His final attempt to infuse new life into his companions at the Norman Home places him temporarily in the role of a saviour or, in his own words, of a “knight-errant” (293). He tries to raise the awareness of the other care home residents to the “staleness” (265) of their lives, encouraging them to challenge Hattie’s authority and find new purpose. His new status as a leader suggests that, in reclaiming his autonomy, he has released himself of the stigma attached to the ‘oldest old’. These shifts in the power dynamics of his relationships with the other nursing home residents indicate that Simon now separates himself from the group, because he is the only one who dared to disobey Hattie and escape the Norman Home. This gulf between the protagonist and the remaining older characters in the novel reinforces culturally pervasive beliefs in the “righteousness of independence” (Life 12) and prescriptive views of what it means to age successfully.
Ultimately, the novel suggests that aging is mostly a matter of personal choice. In Simon’s own words, he has “tried old age” (Hassler 306) and is now ready to move on to something else. This new stage in his life resembles that which Featherstone and Hepworth described as “an extended plateau of active middle age” (44), as he returns to his old hobbies and occupations. For him, the unwillingness of the other nursing home residents to do the same is a sign not of their physical decline, but of their moral degeneration. At the end of the narrative, the residents respond to Simon’s challenge to try and find new purpose in their lives. They ask him to drive them to the nearest hospital, so that they can retrieve the amputated foot of a deceased resident in order to bury it in consecrated ground. Although the mission is successfully accomplished, Simon interprets the unconventionality of his friends’ request and their “moronic behavior” (303) throughout the adventure as signs of senility and of their failure to age well. This dichotomy between the protagonist and the remaining older characters illustrates the intertwinement between progress narratives of aging and the decline paradigm. It shows that outlining a ‘successful’ model of growing older, based on activity and self-reliance, such as the one embodied by Simon, implies endorsing the notion of a ‘bad’ old age, defined by feebleness and dependence.
Simon’s arc, from the torpor and uneventfulness of his days at the Norman Home to his newfound purpose back at the cottage conforms to the archetypes defined by Combe and Schmader as the Frail Elder and Well Elder. Before he moves to the nursing home, Simon displays some of the features associated with the Frail Elder, such as “progressive decline in memory, intellectual performance, and orientation” (38). By the end of the novel, he becomes the embodiment of the Well Elder, flaunting “his excellent health and independence” (38). Simon’s Night depicts these identity categories as transient and fluid, suggesting that the protagonist hops between performative roles. However, the narrative also reinforces dualistic models of thinking about old age, by highlighting the differences that separate Simon from the other older characters, based on their distinct responses to the challenges of late life. The protagonist’s dismissive treatment of the Norman Home residents reflects prescriptive views of activity in old age, which equate worth with busyness and relegate those unable to live up to this cultural imperative to the margins of society.
Conclusion
This study explored how Simon’s Night represents the impact of loss of independence on masculine identities and, extensively, how it engages with dominant age discourses and hegemonic constructs of manhood. First, it examined the novel’s approach to the challenges of negotiating masculinity in a nursing home setting and its reliance on stereotypical views of late life institutionalization as a form of premature death. Second, it analysed Simon’s strategies to escape decline and reclaim his autonomy and discussed them in relation to positive aging narratives and masculine ideals. This section concludes by arguing that the novel’s seemingly positive outlook on old age as a time of agency and new beginnings is accomplished by reinforcing socially prescriptive views of what it means to be a man and to age well. The novel hence reinforces dominant age and gender ideologies. Even though the text challenges decline theories and emphasizes agency and resilience in late life, it also perpetuates the idea that to age well is to not age at all. Furthermore, it suggests that, unless men retain the youthful qualities associated with hegemonic ideals of manhood, like vitality and autonomy, they will become less masculine as they grow older.
In depicting Simon’s arc throughout the narrative as a journey of empowerment, Simon’s Night underscores the performative aspects of age identities, emphasizing the importance of deconstructing and resisting internalized dogmas and expectations of old age to stop them from becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. This narrative approach reframes late life as a period of opportunity, transformation and self-growth, countering recurrent trends in age representations that reduce old age to its physicality and to a mere metaphor for death and decline. Nevertheless, while the novel promotes a positive view of aging, it does not avoid the decline/progress dichotomy that has been culturally prevalent in the past few decades. In portraying Simon as a champion of freedom, something of a self-made—older—man who upholds the traditional virtues of idealized masculinities by refashioning his aged self, the novel endorses progress narratives that deny the realities of aging.
Simon’s Night’s optimistic message about the challenges and opportunities of old age is thus annulled by the novel’s own contradictions, since Simon is presented as an exemplary but ultimately exceptional case of recovered autonomy and vitality, the only older character who endures transformation and change during the narrative. He is also the only care home resident whose displays of agency prove fruitful, since Smalleye is ultimately powerless to change his situation, despite his attempts to resist institutional tyranny. A comparative approach to these two characters therefore highlights Simon’s privileged status as both a healthy, able-bodied older man who can afford to live independently, and as a white man. Unlike Smalleye, Simon is not victimized by racial inequities and his cultural identity is not threatened by the homogenizing and oppressive control of the home’s white administration, and of white society overall, showing the peculiarities of each man’s aging experience and the different factors that contribute to destabilizing masculine identities in late life.
At the beginning of Simon’s Night, the three older male characters in the novel mourn the loss of the physical prowess and freedom that allowed them to pursue their ideals of hegemonic masculinity in middle age. The men are never portrayed exploring the possibility of integrating new age-related experiences to an alternative and more flexible paradigm of masculinity, with Hatch in particular clinging to the fragments of a romanticized past. Simon’s arc, unlike Hatch’s and Smalleye’s, is imbued with hope because the protagonist ultimately manages to reenact hegemonic values, but it can still be read as a missed opportunity, as Simon’s moments of introspection and self-examination do not lead to a more nuanced and multidimensional understanding of manhood, but instead to a renewed faith in his own ability to perform a dominant form of masculinity.
Simon’s Night provides an example of how literary works may encode both positive and negative stereotypes of aged masculinities. Future examinations of older men in contemporary literature could offer additional insight into the role played by fiction in problematizing gender scripts and in highlighting the nuances of identity formation in late life. How has literature captured the diversity of men’s aging experiences? How can it subvert social conventions of what is appropriate in old age and of what it means to be a man? Further research is required to continue to explore these questions and to add new perspectives to the existing knowledge about cultural constructs of aging and masculinity.
Competing Interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.