Paper 1 First Draft
Aloise Ferris sets the table in her quiet house. She sets out two plates, two forks, two knives, two glasses, and two napkins. Her husband, Keith, is very quiet today. Dinner is almost ready, fried chicken, bread and butter, and leftover steamed broccoli. She dishes up both plates, sits down, and looks at the chair where Keith sits. No one is there. Aloise quietly sighs and gets up to put the contents of the other plate in a container.
Keith has been gone for several years now, ten this coming February. And Aloise still finds herself sometimes setting the extra plate at her kitchen table. That happens less now than it did at first though because Aloise has begun to make friends in the community. Female friends.
“When my husband first passed away,” Aloise says, “I often found myself sitting around the house. Five of my eighteen grandchildren lived right down the street, so I didn’t want to miss a visit from them.”
Several years ago, though, her daughter and their family moved a mile away. That mile was all it took for Aloise to turn into a social butterfly.
“Well, I joined the Red Hats, the Senior Sues, and I started playing cards with four other ladies in the neighborhood,” Aloise says, patting her cropped white hair.
Alosie says that when she would go out before the women would either talk badly about their husbands, or about other women. And Aloise says, she hated that.
“I never had anything to add,” she says. “I had a wonderful husband.”
Women tend to do that. One study found that women are more likely to agree with one another than they are with men. Furthermore, women also use more intense language than men do, making everything they say seem more dramatic. Also, if a woman is more “nuturant”, their behavior is reinforced by that of the other women. That means that if a woman is talking badly about her husband, the women around her are more likely to say similar things and make it seem worse than it actually is. (Turner, p. 92)
Virginia Horner, unlike the Aloise and her friends, still has her husband. She doesn’t leave the house much on account of that fact.
“Well, Dad is 90-years-old now,” she says. “So it’s hard for him to get around.”
She says her life is very different from ladies that have lost their husbands. Those that are left, anyway. She’s not sure if she would go out with friends, even if there were.
“I’m 82-years-old,” she says with a phlegmy smokers cough. “So a lot of the ladies we were friends with are gone, not that I think I would go out anyway. The roads are always so busy, I don’t go anywhere unless I have to.”
It may not just be the fact that many people in that age group have passed away. Another study found that in some groups, age is negatively correlated to the interdependence of female friendships. So, the fact that Virginia is 82-years-old may also affect her friendships with women. (Zhang, p. 2)
Another impact on adult female friendships is often the presence of children.
“My kids are involved in sports, plays, and other activities, so a lot of my female friends are mothers of other students in the same activities,” says Claudia Horner, a mother of five children. “But even then, our conversations are limited to the scope of our kids’ activities.”
This is increasingly common. A study found that Americans correlate friendships with common interests. So Claudia isn’t completely off base in her feelings that her friends are the parents of her children’s teammates aren’t wrong. In fact, those parents probably have the same feelings.
“We don’t spend any time together outside of games or events,” Claudia adds. “But we may talk on the phone after discussing something in relation to the activities.”
Female to female friendships are increasingly uncommon as women age, but the loss of a spouse may encourage friendships. Common interests may fuel many adult female friendships, as do conversation in many forms. Regardless, the importance of these bonds is not lost.
“Sure, the ladies get catty if they lose their pennies in poker,” says Aloise. “But going to cards gets me out of the house. It’s fun to go out sometimes.”
Chen, Y., & Nakazawa, M. (2009). Influences of Culture on Self-Disclosure as Relationally Situated in Intercultural
and Interracial Friendships from a Social Penetration Perspective. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 38(2), 77-98. doi:10.1080/17475750903395408.
Turner, L., & Dindia, K. (1995). An Investigation of Female/Male Verbal Behaviors in Same-Sex and Mixed-Sex
Conversations. Communication Reports, 8(2), 86-96. Retrieved from Communication & Mass Media Complete database
Zhang, Z., Li, H., & Bhatt, G. (2006). The Relational Self Defined: Comparing Canadians, Chinese, and Indians.
Conference Papers — International Communication Association, 1-23. Retrieved from Communication & Mass Media Complete database.