subject: Over The Hill No More: Nursing Homes Then And Now [print this page] The phrase "over the hill" is often used lightly today. It's not uncommon to see it used in amiable birthday cards and novelty gift items, consumer items aimed at a quick and easy laugh. The elderly and middle-aged refer to themselves, and each other, by this phrase, tossing it around with a jocular air and jovial sense of self deprecation. This has not always been the case, however. This phrase once conjured fear, shame and despair, its connotations representative of a general anxiety regarding public nursing homes. That the phrase has, since its coining and popularization, transformed into a publicly acceptable and lighthearted comment is an ironic turn in light of its origins. So, where exactly does the phrase come from?
Will Carleton, an American poet known for writing about rural life in the 19th century, made heavy and dramatic use of the phrase in his 1897 ballad, "Over the Hill to the Poor House," a poem that, in reaching popularity, stirred the flames of anxiety about nursing homes. The poem discusses the plight of a woman who has worked hard all her life but who is ultimately abandoned by her family and sent to live alone and dejected in a poor house "over the hill," a fate bemoaned as one of the worst imaginable. This situation acts as a stand-in for the fears of many family matrons, and the phrase "over the hill" came to represent this sense of abandonment, this common perception about the nursing home as a terrible place of exile.
The phrase was further popularized in a film that exacerbated the same underlying perceptions, 1920's "Over the Hill," an early American silent film that reached great success at the box office. The premise again is a woman abandoned by her family, threatened with public nursing home care and the anguish that follows. A 1931 remake starring Mae Marsh reiterated the same sentiment that being sent to a nursing home is fodder for a central conflict in a blockbuster, as bad a villain as any other. The 1937 "Tears of a Mother" recapitulates the same themes, again hammering in the idea that to be "over the hill" is a fate, if not worse than, at least akin to death.
Since then, perceptions both about nursing homes and being "over the hill" have changed. First, the phrase itself has become divorced from the act of entering a nursing home, most likely due to the changing demographics of Americans, with the rural countryside dumping over into cities and suburbs, rendering anachronistic the notion of being sent over a hill. As well, nursing homes themselves have improved greatly since 1897 and the early 20th century, due in large part to improvements in medical technology, changes in perceptions about aging, an increasing population of elderly citizens, and a greater degree of strictly monitored regulations regarding standards of conduct and procedure in nursing homes. Becoming "over the hill" isn't nearly as threatening anymore.
