ABSTRACT
The shift from maturity to old age is a moveable feast, predicated on differences in status, gender and historical period. This chapter suggests that old age was determined primarily by cultural considerations, considerations which were, in the deeply iconographic world of early modern England, primarily visual in nature. It stresses the concept that old age was subdivided into at least two phases, green old age or the young old, and advanced or decrepit old age. The chapter argues that the side-effects of menopause produced a large and wide-ranging set of physical changes on the face and body of poor, rural women that made them look, and be considered, old at approximately age 50. Men also experience bone deterioration as they age, but they also have larger bones to begin with. In rural communities of early modern Suffolk, cultural old age was determined by a number of factors: biology, functionality and appearance.
