Many women may enter old age with reluctance, trepidation, and surprise. What is old age? Or maybe, when? It is not polite to ask women their ages, and age is also relative; young people might think fifty is old, then fifty year olds think seventy is old, then seventy year olds think eighty is actually old, and so on. 

Anxieties accompany aging, both physical and social. There is the pervasive cultural view that once a woman surpasses middle age, she is old. These anxieties are seen in or reinforced in anti-aging magazines, personal reflections on aging, and in social criticism. Age, wrinkles, and gray hair are to be hidden and covered. Eventually bodies are to be hidden too: away from the big screen where the average actress’s career peaks at 30, and away in nursing homes in modern capitalist societies. Old women are hidden from books too; their perspectives are rare throughout the history of literature to today. 

However, older women have been revered since the beginning of time as sources of wisdom and the backbones of family units. Old wives’ tales filter through generations, and this knowledge manifests in print history in the tradition of family cookbooks. Elderly women are revered and uplifted in biographies dedicated to or written by family members, and in some fictional "coming of death novels."  

Today research finds that women 70 years old and older are the happiest people. They have shed the uncertainties and insecurities of youth, created families and/or meaningful relationships, finished careers, and retained long-lasting social connections. “Women of a certain age” in the following works are revered, proud, scared, generous, scrutinized, and celebrated.