The Satire of Gerontophobic Ableism in Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori: A “Salutary Scar”

In recent years, the COVID‑19 pandemic highlighted the widespread reality of ableism and gerontophobia in many societies, as older and disabled people faced institutional violence. In examining a Scottish 20th‑century novel, Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori (1959), this paper investigates how Spark denounces institutional violence through satire, termed satire of “gerontophobic ableism” here. Described by Spark as a “salutary scar”, satire denounces imbalanced care relations in medical institutions in the novel. This paper investigates how the ageing characters become increasingly socially marginalised, as their non‑normative bodies and minds are deemed unproductive to capitalist society, and examines how studying their marginalised experiences can reveal central, societal issues.