Viewpoint of different age groups

Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse

Do you think the behavior of a specific age group, teenage, thirty something, fifties, seventies is fixed or is anything possible?
My story line relies on a big age difference between two characters so that the man is expected to pass away long before the female. What age gap would you consider believable?

Jay Mandal

Maybe ten years? Then you might have a slight generation gap/slightly different viewpoints; and, as women tend to live longer than men, the wife might die twenty years after her husband.

Crazy Horse

I hear what you say, interesting thought that each decade changes our perception.  My story line relies on an awareness that time together is limited. I want to aviod the illness or violence scenrio, the man must be likely to die naturally soon though he is fit and healthy at the time of the story. The grl must be as young as possible in order that she cannot accept the inevitability of life and death, f the gap was 20 years, a 50 year old woman woul be able to cope. A twenty or thirty year old couldn't, forty  maybe.. They get way with it in Emmerdale with Rodney and Kelly where the gap is at least40 years 

Carol

This is a hard one, don't we all know someone who acts young and trendy but is really going on sixty, and a young person who thinks and dresses like a fifty year old.
I have a friend who is married to a man almost twenty five years older.
How you build the relationship between the two characters is what makes the age gap reasonable and believable.

DeeDee

Talking about age gaps - my daughter has just managed to alienate me from our new neighbours - by asking the chap next door what his daughter's name was? He said "she's not my daughter, she's my erm friend - we're getting married in a fortnight". Got to be a 25 - 30 year gap there.
I don't suppose they will be taking in any more parcels for me now - whoops!

Carol

Well she wasn't to know!

Crazy Horse

Thanks so far all your commnts have been a great help. I will tread careully but you have given me confidence that the storyline will work.

Stirling

I don't think so.  I was born in 1981 (I'm 24), as a supporter of groups like Amnesty International, Oxfam and Make Poverty History, I feel like I should have been this age in the Sixties.  I love being subversive, especially with Mr Blair!.

prosaic

Hi CH,

I think we have a novel v real-life situation here...

In real-life (wot's that?) age pigeon-holing is not dissimilar to racism - of course all people of x age do not act the same and many act as y or z or v or w age.

But the phrase "stranger than fiction" is a slight warning. People will read your writing with prior perceptions. If one makes a eighty-year old Granny like rap music it will seem forced, unless...

unless one writes really convincingly - and makes her a rounded character. Then I think one can convince readers of cross-age perception differences.

So, if it is minor character I wouldn't bother and would write in-line with public perception. But for more major characters I would try to pen them really well and try to take the readers with me. Let's call it a blow for anti-ageism.

Cheers, p

Crazy Horse

stirling talks a lot of sense. I wanted to have very different ages for the main characters to challenge the pigeon holing.. why for instance assume that a young doctor is less skilled than an aged consultant? Yes the older man will have had more experience but will he or she have learnt more from it? The young are not cluttered by out dated knowledge and have learnt at the latest cutting edge. A sixty year old may creak more than a teenager but may be more adventurous. Yes or No?

Carol

Definately. On both those examples.

sal

I suggest that the differences in age groups would show in how they speak eg a teenager would talk and behave with less restraint than say,a pensioner who as born in a more formal era.

sallyannie

I think a 25-30yr old woman with a 45-50 yr old man is quite believable, particularly is she's been badly hurt by men of her own age prior to the relationship - she will want to be cared for and looked after, thus more devastated by the loss of him. If he has a youthful outlook, e.g. prefers going to pubs and clubs, plays sports etc, rather than more traditional pastimes of that age group then that adds to the authenticity.

Crazy Horse

Thanks Sallyann and all I think I am seeng where I am going. Everyone is differet and there will be many different reasons for reltionships to occur. What factors are most significant? Culture?, social group? inteligence? peer pressure? In the soap Emmrdale the writers were bold enough to link 60 something Rodney wth 20 year old Kelly Then there was the very successul 'May to Septeber'  A 20 year old girl with a sixty year old man seems to have been accepted but am I rght in thinking a 20 year old boy with a sixty year old woman would be harder to sell?  Anybody know what the ages were in 'The Graduate' &'Lollia'?

Jay Mandal

Wasn't the girl in Lolita only twelve or thirteen?

Anyanka

Hi, newbie here - hope you don't mind me joining in just like this.

Mrs Robinson was played by then 36-year-old Anne Bancroft, and Benjamin by 30-year-old Dustin Hoffman. In the film, they were supposed to be 21 and 40something.

'Harold and Maude' features a much more extreme age-gap; as far as I can recall Harold is 19 to Maude's 79 (the actors were 23 and 75).

For novels featuring extreme age gaps, try Toni Morrison's 'Love' which has a man in his 50s or 60s marry his grand-daughter's best friend.

The original question was of course about the behaviour - which is not fixed, but certainly heavily influenced by one's generation.

Jay Mandal

I keep being reminded of a Somerset Maugham (sp?) story, but it may have been about a handsome man and a plain girl rather than an older woman. I'll try to find out what I'm talking about.

GPW

I'm writing a novel in which a man of 50 finds himself drawn to a girl of 16. She turns out to be his daughter - the result of an affair - but I have the same problem of making the whole thing believable until I'm ready to reveal her true identity. There are no sexual feelings involved but in some ways, I think that gives the game away!

Carol

There have been studies about seperated siblings, who meet by chance and seem to be instictually attracted to each other, resulting in some cases of unknowing incest.
Perhaps there is something in our instincts that identifies us to each other.
Sometimes families carry specific dominant facial features which are clues as well.

Jay Mandal

They say we're attracted to people who look like us.

Jay Mandal

Er ... male-female, I meant.

Anyanka

I've read that we are attracted to people who DON'T look like us; an evolutionary quirk to protect us from accidental incest. I'm sure you can find a scientific explanation to back pretty much any theory about relationships and human behaviour...

Back to the subject - the mention of the novel about a father accidentally attracted to his own daughter reminded me of 'Homo Faber' by Max Frisch, which features just such a relationship. Of a sexual nature.