Download or read book The Silent Echo written by Helen Paloge and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Silent Echo examines the texts and subtexts of a number of English and American contemporary women's novels dealing with middle age. These novels of midlife chart the brief development of a female protagonist in early or late middle age as she achieves some measure of emotional and physical contentment or wisdom. Author Helen Paloge clearly shows that, in fact, these novels, which claim to confront in narrative terms the gender-bound implications of aging, generally reveal an unconscious denial of the truth of aging's significance for women, a consistent dishonesty on this score, and an ultimate refusal to confront the issues they claim to examine. The Silent Echo explores fiction by such authors as Margaret Atwood, Joan Barfoot, Fay Weldon, and Joyce Carol Oates, in search of the middle-aged woman's body and its decline unto death. If the quest for happiness or meaning in most of these novels proves successful, it is despite, rather than because of, the middle-aged body. The aging female body might present no hindrance to happiness, but it must be acknowledged and engaged.