Amanda Hampson grew up in rural New Zealand. She left school at 16, without telling her parents, and began a lifetime of learning. In her early twenties she spent three years living in London, travelling widely before settling in Sydney. It was a lifelong dream to become a novelist but it took another 20 years before she had the courage to write her first novel. The Olive Sisters was accepted by Penguin Books, became a bestseller and was published internationally. She has three grown up children and three grandchildren, who all live in other cities. Her books include: The Olive Sisters, Two for the Road, The French Perfumer, The Yellow Villa, Sixty Summers and Lovebirds.
Today, Amanda Hampson is on the blog to tell us about Lovebirds, but also why we should be paying a lot more attention to little old ladies – we might just have a thing or two to learn from them. Read on …
Amanda Hampson
Busting the little old lady myth in Lovebirds
I’m often asked where I find inspiration for my stories, and the simple answer is from lived experience and lives of women around me. There are many stereotypical and derogatory terms for older women; granny, biddy, old bag, hag and crone, but the term ‘little old lady’ is one of the most corrosive and still commonly used. It assumes that older women are frail, harmless and powerless. One last attempt to disempower us.
In 2011, my eldest son and I decided to run the New York Marathon to celebrate his fortieth birthday. I had never run before but I thought it was doable. It took almost two years of training before we arrived in New York, and I was confident that I could complete the 42.2km course. I wasn’t trying to win it — just finish. But over the next few days leading up to the event, my confidence began to wane. It was clear by people’s comments that they weren’t seeing me as a fit, prepared and determined 59 year old. They saw a little old lady punching above her weight. The doubt in their eyes rattled me. When an official at the registration centre expressed surprise that I was an entrant, not just accompanying my son, I crossly pointed out half a dozen male entrants who didn’t look as if they would make it across the start line, let alone finish. She had the good grace to apologise but still it stung, even after that big finishers medal was hung around my neck.
As it turned out, there were further indignities ahead. As a child, I had dreamed of having an invisibility cloak, now I was wearing one without even realising. I remember one day waiting at a takeaway counter with a crowd of customers until I was the last person there whereupon, the two young men behind the counter heaved a sigh of relief and one said, ‘Okay let’s get those tomatoes in before it gets busy again.’ They both walked off out the back and I was left standing alone in the shop wearing a bemused expression which was, of course, invisible.
I suppose we should be grateful that senicide, the practice of killing or abandoning the elderly in the wilderness, has fallen out of favour. For the Inuit people this involved putting the elderly on an ice floe. The Japanese used to take them into the wilderness to a place called Obasute-yama meaning; The Mountain Where Old Women are Abandoned, and colloquially known as Granny-dump Mountain. Forty years ago, when my own nana refused to leave the house where she’d lived most of her life, one of my aunties drugged her and dumped her in an old people’s home. She was only in her late sixties but evidently not entitled to make her own decisions. There is no way my auntie would have done that to my grandfather.
‘Older women these days are a different breed altogether.’
While men seem to gain gravitas with every passing year, we lose it with every grey hair. We are expected to do homey comforting things like baking and knitting, while they are invited onto boards. We famously drive slowly and stay close to home, making our second-hand vehicles desirable, even if we have ceased to be. Perhaps a generation or two ago those clichés may have been true, but not anymore. Older women these days are a different breed altogether.
I asked women friends in their eighties what the term Little Old Lady meant to them. They agreed it diminished and infantilised them. They also felt it contributed to the problem that, instead of supporting and encouraging them to be independent, well-intentioned family members were inclined to take over and sideline them, making them feel more helpless.
Older women face many challenges today. Some are in unhappy relationships but don’t have the confidence or financial independence to leave. Those who are single, widowed or divorced may be struggling financially and, increasingly, at risk of homelessness. For the majority of us, raised in the fifties and sixties and trained to be obedient and compliant, our lives have been a series of evolutions as we moved from one phase to another, and many women feel lost at this stage of their lives.
It was my recognition of the perceptions of ageing, versus the experience, that inspired me to write about older women’s lives. In The Yellow Villa I wrote about two women with a thirty year age difference, both struggling to work out what they wanted from life. In Sixty Summers, three friends about to turn sixty, each of whom feels she hasn’t fulfilled her promise, and wondering if it’s too late. They attempt to recreate a youthful backpacking trip through Europe, an experience that mostly goes wrong but gives them the impetus to make changes in their lives.
In my new novel Lovebirds, the main character, Elizabeth, initially appears a little grumpy and taciturn. She attends her best friend’s funeral (accompanied by her budgie) and makes awkward connections with people. She suffers from slights and is burdened by grudges but, travelling back in time, we meet her younger self and understand the courage and strength it took to get her this far. Elizabeth is forced into action when her grandson gets into trouble with the police. Desperate for the boy to take responsibility and adhere to his curfew, she decides to take him on a road trip to find her husband, the love of her life, who went bush thirty years earlier; a journey that turns out to be both hilarious and life-changing for both of them.
Once we were young and lovely and, regardless of how the world sees us now, we are still those same women — but better, stronger, more resilient and interesting with life experience. We’re honest, funny and self-deprecating. We can discuss anything with other women — sometimes women we barely know. We may look like little old ladies but there is so much more to us. Like most women my age, I have endured terrible times that I thought would never end, suffered devastating heartbreak, lost my parents and several close friends, and pushed on with life. We are women of strength and courage with complex histories, who have overcome life’s many obstacles and endured. We’re capable of more than people imagine. We won’t accept invisibility, we deserve to be seen.
—Lovebirds by Amanda Hampson (Penguin Books Australia) is out on the 4th of May.
Lovebirds
Not all marriages end in happily ever after...
In their youth, lovebirds Elizabeth and Ray had to fight to be together. Their future was full of promise and, blessed with children and careers, their happiness complete. But a twist of fate changed their lives forever. Now in her sixties, Elizabeth is desperately lonely. She rarely sees her two adult sons and her closest friend is a talkative budgie. But when her grandson, Zach, gets into trouble with the police, she decides to take him on a road trip to find his grandfather, her lost love Ray, in the hope of mending their broken family...
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