Invisible No More: Women in Midlife Are Finally Novels' Main Characters
Invisible No More: Women in Midlife Are Finally Novels' Main Characters
Sara Levine Mon, March 9, 2026 at 5:26 PM UTC
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Invisible No More: Women in Midlife Are Finally Novels' Main Characters
Virginia Evans didn’t have high expectations for her latest book. The novel, inspired by a chance meeting with an 80-year-old homeowner at her open house, was Evans’s eighth; none of her previous books had sold to a publisher. “I was thinking it would be a palate-cleansing exercise, and then I was going to write something else,” Evans tells KCM. But she decided to share the finished draft — centered on a retired lawyer in her 70s, told in letters — with her agent anyway. Her agent’s reception was cautious: “I don't know if a book about an old woman written in letters is a viable thing for the world we live in at this moment,” Evans recalls her saying. But she sent it out to publishing houses anyway.
The Correspondent debuted in April 2025 to modest success — around 8,000 copies sold per month — and without celebrity book club inclusions or splashy features (those would come later). But by October, it had landed on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list, thanks to steady sales and word-of-mouth recommendations. Now, the novel is in its 18th printing and has sold over 550,000 copies.
The runaway success of The Correspondent put to bed concerns that readers won’t buy stories centered around women in their 60s and 70s — and it’s not the only book of its kind to come out this past year. While I was speeding through my summer reading list, I was struck by how many novels on my digital shelf featured female protagonists in midlife and above. From historical fiction to dark thrillers, the one similarity that kept coming up again and again was that these books centered on a demographic that, until now, was rarely represented in entertainment.
Representation problem
Despite the fact that data from the Pew Research Center found that more women read books than men — 77 percent compared to 68 percent, respectively — 79 percent of protagonists in the top 200 best-selling novels up until 2015 were men. When a woman is the protagonist of a novel, she's usually in her 20s or 30s, according to the authors we spoke to.
“In commercial fiction, the women tend to stop aging at around 40 if they're lucky,” says 80-year-old author Joy Fielding, who’s penned over two dozen novels. Fiona Davis, New York Times best-selling author of historical fiction novels including The Lions of Fifth Avenue, agrees that protagonists in fiction “usually tend to be in their 20s.” Adding insult to injury, data shows that adults ages 45-64 buy the most books — yet they’re less likely to see themselves depicted on the page.
But as female authors themselves get older, they’re pushing back. “The older we get, the more interesting I find women to be,” Fielding says, “but I noticed that there weren't as many interesting older women as main characters.” Fielding’s latest book, Jenny Cooper Has a Secret, is set in a retirement home, and its protagonist is in her 70s. Similarly, for her most recent novel, The Stolen Queen, Davis wanted to write a character in her 60s because such heroines are rare.
Ageism, particularly the double-edged sword of gendered ageism, is all too prevalent in society. Across many forms of media, adults 50 and above struggle with accurate representation. Women in this age group are underrepresented on-screen, according to a report by the Geena Davis Institute, and when they do appear, they're likely to be depicted as senile, frail, or physically unattractive. They don't fare much better in literature— a 2023 review notes that in books, seniors are often characterized as “physically unattractive or infirm,” confused, or lonely.
These portrayals have real-life consequences beyond our entertainment value; they influence how older people view themselves. The Geena Davis Institute found that "women internalize cultural messages about aging, forming cognitive representations of menopause that then shape how they interpret their own experiences." That doesn’t just lead to a negative self-perception — it can negatively impact “physical health and functioning, physical activity, and even mortality.”
Evans may be 39, but when writing The Correspondent, she was inspired by her relationships with people like her grandparents, mother-in-law, and mentor — older adults with fascinating, full lives. “So many readers who are Sybil’s contemporaries have told me, ‘I never see a fully fledged woman in her 70s in books who's not a trope or a side character,’” she says. “That was motivating me when I was writing the book — to show the 360-degree view of someone.”
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Reframing stereotypes
By writing heroines in their 60s and 70s, authors like Evans, Davis, and Fielding aren’t just giving a voice to an underrepresented demographic. They’re going one step further, using their books as a powerful tool to subvert harmful stereotypes.
“People talk about how, as you get older, you become invisible as a woman,” Davis tells KCM. “That's awful, but at the same time, it can be a superpower.” Davis used her protagonist’s age to her benefit in The Stolen Queen, as 60-year-old Charlotte hunts down a precious artifact. "She can lurk in places and not be seen; she can ask questions and not arouse suspicion,” she says. “It gives her freedom.”
Rewriting stereotypes of women of a certain age was also a crucial element of Samantha Downing’s latest thriller, Too Old For This, about a serial killer in her 70s who’s forced to come out of retirement. “We infantilize older people sometimes, and treat them as if they're not capable of making decisions the way a younger adult can,” Downing tells us. “So I wanted [my protagonist] Lottie to use that to her advantage.” Throughout the book, Lottie gets away with murder (literally) by playing on younger people’s perceptions and letting them think she’s less mentally and physically capable than she actually is.
A welcome trend
Thankfully, as with the recent swell of movies starring actresses over 70, publishing seems to be catching up. A search for “midlife” and “middle age” on Publishers Marketplace, an online database for the publishing industry, reveals 10 books published in 2025 and 11 in 2024, compared to just one in 2017 and four in 2018. It’s imprecise data — but it’s hinting at a change.
“In the last few years, I’ve definitely noticed more books centering older female protagonists,” says book publicist Kathleen Carter. She says she’s not sure whether it’s because more of those books are being published, or just that the ones that are have been getting more attention. But, she says, “What is clear is that readers are hungry for stories about women over 40 living full, interesting, and complicated lives.”
Davis’s The Stolen Queen hit the New York Times bestseller list, and her agent tells us that sales have been brisk ever since. Too Old For This, Downing’s thriller, is the second bestselling book of her career. More than eight months after publication and still months away from the paperback hitting shelves, it continues to move thousands of copies per month.
This is all coming at a cultural moment where influential women in midlife and beyond are breaking barriers of what’s expected as we age — from Naomi Watts opening up about menopause to Andie MacDowell embracing her gray hair to Pamela Anderson swearing off makeup to the breakout popularity of The Golden Bachelor. Authors, celebrities, and other culture makers are “using their power and platforms to change the narrative,” Carter says.
That, in turn, influences the kind of stories that publishers want to see, says Carter: “It is completely thrilling to see the response from readers who reaffirm that we just want more.”
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
