Modern Maturity: Middle-Aged Anxiety in Modern American Fiction

Abstract

‘Modern Maturity’ examines American fiction from the 1920s and 30s in light of the social and psychological difficulties attributed to middle age, specifically the anxieties attending the recognition of oneself as belonging to a supposedly mature generation. While the era saw the rise of youth culture, shifting generational demographics resulted in pointedly new roles for the middle aged, roles that appeared both amorphous and unappealing. While the category ‘middle age’ was widely applied to those in their 30s through their 50s, it consistently alluded to physical as well as psychological dissatisfaction. Detailing a series of personal and professional discontents, the idealization of youth, and a profound redefinition of familial and romantic roles, writing by Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anzia Yezierska, Tillie Olsen, William Faulkner, Nella Larsen, Eugene O’Neill, Floyd Dell, Sinclair Lewis, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Atherton, and Anita Loos pinpoints the considerable generational anxieties encircling the middle-aged moderns.