SOURCE: "Maturity and Old Age," in Jean Stafford, Twayne Publishers, 1985, pp. 61-76.

In the following excerpt, Walsh examines Stafford's depiction of older, mature women in her short fiction.

The fiction that portrays maturing women, women married, widowed, divorced, or alone by choice, women in their last years, develops characters who are generally more active in controlling the circumstances of their lives than are the girls and younger women that Stafford creates. Nevertheless, some of the characters are portrayed as victims, some as a result of their own detachment from or arrogance toward the world. Images of illness become prominent in this work. The real orphans in Stafford's other fiction give way mainly to the imagery of the orphan used to describe the lonely conditions of the older women. The apparent impossibility of a sustained and loving marriage relationship becomes an important theme. As with those about girls and...