Dave, you are absolutely right. More women are widowed than men. Certainly in the parts of the world that we describe as Western civilisation. I'm not so sure about the rest of the world. About twenty years ago I saw some life expectancy figures from Bangladesh, where men lived 1-2 years longer than women. And this summer New York Times published life expectancy figures from Zimbabwe, where men lived almost three years longer than women, although neither men nor women on average lived to be forty!
But in the western parts of the world, yes, there are certainly more widows than widowers. And that is undoubtedly part of the reason why our societies have given widows a certain role to play and certain codes of conduct to observe, whereas I don't think that this is generally the case for widowers. Admittedly the social mores are changing for women, too. But when I was a kid, I remember that you could see that a woman was widowed, because she would wear black. I particularly remember that she would wear black stockings. In extreme cases she would hang a small black veil from her hat to cover her face. She could be dressed like that for a long time, for months or even for years. But you could never spot a widower from his clothes, unless he wore a black mourning-band. (Yes, he would wear black during the funeral, of course, but afterwards he would dress "normally".)
I still think that our societies "expect a little more" from widows than from widowers, and that that fact might make it tempting to show Clark's grief if he was to become widowed. Because he would grieve out of the the true love and grief of his heart, not first and foremost because society expected it from him.
And Dave: the fact(?) that our societies may still expect a little more from widows than from widowers has nothing to do with how much the individual widow or widower will grieve. My grandfather was two years younger than his wife. When she died at 86, he was absolutely heartbroken. He lived ten more years without her, but he talked about her all the time, and he cried a lot.
Still, people who haven't watched the grief of a widower up close may be "subconsciously aware" of "the lesser expectations" placed on a widower compared with the expectation placed on a widow. It's fun to write and read about unusual things. What would you rather read about, "Dog Bit Man" or "Man Bit Dog"?
Ann
