Writing against the cult of youth: gender and age in Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori and Michel Houellebecq’s La Possibilité d’une Île

Through a comparison of a British and a French novel that satirize the cult of youth, Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori (1959) and Houellebecq’s La Possibilité d’une Île (2005), this article examines aspects of the gendered and socio-economic implications of ageing, from the mid-twentieth century until today in a European context. As Susan Sontag (1972) argued, referring to the phenomenon as the ‘double standard of ageing’, women are especially affected by the cult of youth, and marginalized as they age. Drawing from theory in ageing and gender studies, ageing is envisioned here as socially and culturally realized. This article argues that the novels reveal similar ageist and sexist attitudes which became increasingly prevalent in the latter half of the twentieth century. Despite notable cultural and historical differences, Scottish writer Muriel Spark already foregrounded the issue of gendered ageism in 1959 during the post-war economic expansion in Britain, and French writer Michel Houellebecq’s novel exemplifies how the issue manifests in different ways in atomized twenty-first century societies.