Holland, Dorothy J2009-10-072009-10-071999b4384251343890682Thesis 48628http://hdl.handle.net/1773/10213Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999In this study I apply feminist theory and age theory to the analyze the representations of older women in nineteenth-century American plays. Reading the play scripts against contemporary sources drawn from medical treatises, advice manuals, literature, lithographs, newspapers, diaries and letters, I suggest that the convergence of sexism and ageism evident in the plays reflects an ongoing attempt to regulate female sexuality and to stabilize gender/power relations in the rapidly changing social world of mid-nineteenth-century America---a time when women's demands for legal, economic, educational, and sexual rights were beginning to gain ground.iv, 235 p.en-USCopyright is held by the individual authors.Theses--DramaThesis