The Seven Ages (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Eva Figes
- First Published: 1986
- Type of Work: Social chronicle
- Time of Work: The 1980’s, with flashbacks to earlier periods
- Setting: A small village in the countryside of Great Britain
- Principal Characters: The Narrator, Kate, Sally, Moruiw, Judith, Alice, Lady Lucy, Lady Sarah, Sophie, the Matriarch, Dora, Granny Martin
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: Freedom, Mothers, Parents and children, Religion, Villages, Alienation, 1980’s, Medicine, Childbirth, Women’s rights, Great Britain
- Locales: England
The Novel
Most of the action in The Seven Ages is in the past, stories of earlier women as remembered by other women and heard by the Narrator, who has just retired to the countryside after thirty-five years of practice as a midwife. She has taken up residence in a small cottage near the farm, where, as an evacuee from World War II, she spent her childhood with her Aunt Doris and her cousin Ada.
While their talents vary, the women from the past are like most women—involved in bearing or not bearing children, and worrying about them as women have been occupied...
[The entire page is 2373 words long]
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