Mapping female ageing in the twenty-first century in Deborah Moggach's last novels

Despite having published seventeen novels, a good number of short stories, and scripts since she started her writing career at the end of the 1970s, academic work on Moggach's literary career has mainly dealt with her novel These Foolish Things (2004) and its film version The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011). This paper will focus on Moggach's last three novels in which the reader is guided by the voice of three women in their late sixties and seventies, namely Something to Hide (2015), The Carer (2019), and The Black Dress (2021). Following an already well-established body of criticism on representations of female ageing in fiction, this paper will argue that Moggach's last novels add nuance and richness to the representation of female ageing in the twenty-first century. With her particular use of narrative humour, Moggach allows the reader into the minds of female characters who, on the one hand, are still affected by Sontag's “double standard of ageing” (1972) which makes them feel utterly lonely, both at an individual and social level, whereas, on the other hand, they are hungry to establish meaningful relationships, especially in their path to old age and death. By fostering new romantic and sexual relationships, and probably without being aware of it, Moggach's female characters escape the pressures of agelessness and embrace their ageing bodies as well as those of their lovers, even if only for a while.