ABSTRACT
Lady Sarah Cowper began her diary during a particularly difficult period in her life. Specifically, the diary illustrates the variability of the ageing experience, its fluid boundaries, and distinctions between early, vigorous years of old age and later deterioration. For married women, two factors were especially important in their ageing: the shift in identity from mother with children present to mother with adult children, and the presence or absence of a husband. Widowhood without dependent children, and with sufficient financial provision, could be the height of a woman's experience of freedom and autonomy. So while risky, the early post-menopausal years could potentially be the most rewarding of a woman's lifespan. On the one hand, Lady Sarah's writing displays the negative side of contemporary attitudes to old age, the fear and disgust at its toll on health, mobility and mental capacity, and the contempt felt for the aged, especially the infirm.
