Introduction
Widowhood is devastating! When a husband dies, it is like a grenade has detonated, and one is scattered into a thousand little pieces. The widow did not die, though sometimes she may wish that she would have. Now she has the arduous job of grieving and rebuilding a new self that is constructed from bits of her old self combined with the unknown with few guidelines to follow. Uncertainty pervades widows' grieving and restructuring her "self'." Women do not usually use the word uncertainty when they speak. Instead they say that they do not know what they are going to do. But even though they do not explicitly express uncertainty that does not mean it does not exist. Part of the ethnographer's job is to take note of feelings and behavior that exist below an individual's level of consciousness (Hammersley and Atkinson 2019).
This study grew out of my concern with the plight of widows in American society today combined with the anger and distress at the way I was treated by my husband's colleagues after his death. I had participated in his professional and social academic life for more than 30 years, but I ceased to exist after his Commemoration of Life Ceremony planned by his department and me. This abandonment hurt deeply as I thought that I was an integral part of his professional community and I found this upsetting and demoralizing. Thus, I started on an investigative journey. Unfortunately, there was a dearth of academic literature on widowhood that could guide me (Lopata 1994, 1997, 2000, 2017). Lopata, to my knowledge is the only social scientist to study widowhood in a wide variety of circumstances. She used a feminist/sociological approach, with an emphasis on the study of social roles and gender stratification.
As a sociologist, as well as a widow, I was interested in understanding which factors influenced self-image, status, emotions, and everyday interactions of middle-aged and older widows. While I had plenty of social support from family and women friends, there was a gaping hole in my life. Did other widows feel the same way? Did other widows feel as much resentment as I did? Or was I an outlier? Were academic couples atypical? I did not know. I realized that being both a participant and a researcher was an advantage and a disadvantage. I had a deep knowledge of marriage and widowhood, but this was accompanied by a deep bias of which I constantly needed to be aware upon embarking on this research project.
Framework
This paper uses the concept of uncertainty in general and objective and subjective uncertainty specifically as a framework for this research (Spiekermann and Weiss 2016; Ülkümen, Fox and Malle 2016). I posit that these two kinds of uncertainty are complementary. Objective uncertainty refers more frequently to specific states or conditions. Subjective uncertainty refers more frequently to a proposed action, interaction, or relationship. Two areas of objective uncertainties are of specific concern for the widow—health and finances. Objective uncertainty is more stable than its subjective counterpart. External (objective) reasons for uncertainty lead to internal (subjective) evaluation of objectively uncertain situations. Furthermore, subjective uncertainty is fluid and can change despite there being no shift in the objective situation. A widow can go from one intended course of action to one that is diametrically opposite; for example, from confiding/not confiding feelings to a friend even if her information about the friend has not changed.
Uncertainty also plays a role in a widow's adoption of a changed identity. This process may be fraught with misinterpretations as she attempts to reestablish herself in her social world. Re-establishing a new identity as an independent single woman cannot be achieved alone because a woman does not live in isolation; therefore, clues from others need to be observed and interpreted. From the outside, a widow's return to a fully active member of society may seem straightforward, but it is a complex undertaking involving many fits and starts. When widows interact, they need information about the other party when starting new relationships and even when interacting with former friends and acquaintances to ameliorate their objective and subjective uncertainty (Berger and Calabrese 1975; Griffin 2012; West and Turner 2014).
Listed below are a few characteristics of both the widow and her community that relate to uncertainty:
General uncertainties and lack of congruence between widows' and community norms (e.g., health, finances, relationships, religious groups, and work groups)
Lack of agreement about ambiguous or changing norms on bereavement and death within the community
Variability in expectations of widows' behavior
Background
All throughout history, and even today, societies in many parts of the world treat widows poorly or harshly. In the past, Indian women were supposed to commit suttee being burned on a funeral pyre after their husbands died (Roye 2011). Even today, some are forced to leave their homes to live in poverty and beg for a living (Bhattacharyya and Singh 2017).
Widows in Victorian times were expected to wear black clothing and were prevented from engaging in social activities for a year (Loeffel-Atkins 2012). However, there is one major difference between these widows who followed traditional practices and the widows in this study (except for the very devout) that as onerous as their traditional lives might have been, the rules were clear, and they knew that if they broke them they would face social sanctions. These women experienced certainty. Social norms, however, change, and current widows may find norms ambiguous, which lead to uncertainty. Some research shows that even the certainty of an unpleasant outcome may have less deleterious effects on an individual's well-being than living with uncertainty (Walton 2016).
Ambiguity breeds uncertainty. When gender norms shift, they remain in a state of flux. Older widows, raised in a different time, may not be certain which norms apply to them, and under what circumstances. Furthermore, social life in the United States is still based on couples. During the years when women in this study were reaching adulthood, some traditional members of the community still believed that the final stage of adulthood was achieved only when a man and woman married and had children (Fremstad 2012). Single women, on the other hand, were denigrated and called spinster and old maid (Nanik, Tairas, and Hendriani 2018). While gender roles have shifted in this area, the couple as an ideal still largely exists in society (Fremstad 2012). Will the widow feel liberated without a husband or will she feel left out and isolated? The widow may be uncertain how she feels about her new options and uncertain how she may be received by different actors in her friendships, work, and religious groups.
In this time of personal turmoil, social support is even more necessary than before the woman became a widow. This support comes primarily from family, friends, and religious institutions. Before their deaths, husbands had provided support and companionship as well (Douglas, Georgio, and Westbrook 2017; Ranby and Aiken 2016). Some widows have known their husbands since they were young. Thus, when a husband dies, he usually leaves a big gap in the support system. Support from family and friends becomes an urgent lifeline and sometimes this line frays, which generates a great deal of angst and uncertainty. Inadequate social support can have strong negative effects on grieving and recovering widows that often leads to greater subjective uncertainty. How will the widow compensate for the loss of social support? Will she join support groups with similar interests or experiences, or will she rely on her deeply felt religious and spiritual beliefs that also tend to protect against social isolation? For some widows, a strong dependence on God as a social support appears to help allay depression and anxiety (Maltby and Day 2020).
Uncertainty is a problem for the widow as is a lack of visibility, a complaint of many widows (Blades 2011). Widows are omnipresent, but they are rarely "seen". Invisibility develops quickly, shortly after a short mourning period such as Shiva in the Jewish community or a Viewing in an Irish- Catholic community (McDermott 2013; Ochs 2017). But once becoming invisible, it is difficult to become visible again. When you are visible, you have a certain amount of standing and a voice. Being invisible means you have neither, and you feel uncertain as to whether, or when, you can regain either of them. The amount of uncertainty related to invisibility is also closely related to the extent of agreed social expectations within a community. If these vary due to differences in social values, then both objective and subjective uncertainty hinder the widow's ability to find her niche as an esteemed single woman.
Social norms tend to be ambiguous during a time when social norms change at different rates. This can be more problematic for the widow than norms that have changed more drastically but have been generally accepted. Ambiguity breeds uncertainty. Few universal norms and social structures exist currently to help widows fathom the cultural nexus within which her loss is embedded, or ascertain the widow's ability to navigate her newly configured social roles. Extensive research has been carried out about the mental and physical consequences of widowhood and grief (Holm, Berland, and Severinsson 2019; Holm and Severinsson 2012). Little is known, however, about the social and behavioral adjustments made by middle-aged and older widows, and the role uncertainty plays in these adjustments (Lindley 2013). Research about emotional uncertainty is prevalent in the medical field, for example, trauma, death, and dementia, but is meagre elsewhere (Carleton et al. 2019). A wife faced with widowhood experiences an overload of emotional uncertainty because she needs to deal with the uncertainty related to the course and timing of her husband's illness and death as well as the uncertainty regarding her future widowhood. Lopata (1994, 1996, 2000, 2017) is the only social scientist, to my knowledge, to study widowhood in depth. She combined a feminist and sociological perspective in her study of gender stratification and gender roles of widows in their everyday lives.
Methods
When using a symbolic interaction approach, participant observation, and semi-structured and unstructured interviews are the primary ways to uncover patterned social realities and develop insights into the meanings of participants (Denzin, 2017). A critical ethnographic perspective adds another layer of depth. The reflexivity of the ethnographical approach is based on the idea that we, including the researcher, are actors in our social world and can reflect on our feelings, attitudes, and actions as objects to be studied (Hammersley and Atkins 2019; McQueeney and Lavelle 2017). To understand the inner life of a widow—her fears, doubts, aspirations, and how she expresses them in her new status of being single—both participant and analytic perspectives are needed. I enter the research project with this awareness. Though I have years of experience in qualitative research (Kenen 1982; Kenen, Arden-Jones, and Eeles 2003; Kenen et al. 2011), I am a novice in two areas–-being both a recent widow and a recent critical ethnographer.
Power between researcher and those being studied is always an issue, but it is particularly important to address when conducting ethnographic research (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019). I never felt that I had any power; simply put, I am small in stature and I always look younger than my age. I have spent much of my life trying to prove that I had a brain as well as a body. Of course, the title "professor" has the potential of being a power laden status that can open a gulf between researcher and participants being studied. I tried to offset this by being low key, friendly, and upfront about being a widow. Before each interview, we chatted for a few minutes, sharing some of our feelings and experiences. If the widow became emotional, I reflected her feelings and spoke about my having the same feelings in a similar situation. These brief indications of solidarity usually calmed the participant.
The main differences that I discerned between my etic perspective and the emic perspective of the participant were related to my lifestyle. I listed my known biases (e.g., social status, health, financial well-being, race, education, and religion) and placed these above my computer station as a visual reminder of them instead of writing specific reflexivity notes simultaneously with field notes.