On Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 06:20 PM, Jackie wrote:

Person, maybe?

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What people say is very often a product of the era in which they were alive.  And the "crazy old lady" and "crazy old man" tropes are both way, way older than I am.  O'Malley lived from 1858 to 1932, and social conventions and writing conventions were quite different then.  I'd fully expect that someone of that era would have used male pronouns only when referring to humankind (once, mankind, which always meant all of humanity).  One of the dangers I see today is that there is an insistance of reading certain historical texts as though they were written with the writing conventions of today, which they were not.  Knowing the conventions of the milieu when a piece of literature originated is often vital to actually understanding what the author was trying to say.

The personification of memory using one of those previously noted two tropes was, to me, a "flip a coin and pick one" affair.  The point is about the nature of memory, and the personification serves that purpose only.  It's not a comment on male or female.

For those interested in a bit more information on Austin O'Malley, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_O'Malley_(author) 

P.S.:  The medical appointment went as well as could be expected.  The crisis occurred on August 1st.  This was a 2-month follow-up. 
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Brian - Virginia, USA  - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044  

Memory is a crazy woman that hoards rags and throws away food.

         ~ Austin O'Malley