Blessed or Not? The New Spinster in England and the United States in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
- 1 December 1984
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Journal of Family History
- Vol. 9 (4), 394-414
- https://doi.org/10.1177/036319908400900406
Abstract
After 1870, single women in England and America began to speak favorably about spinsterhood. With new acceptable means to earn money and with a growing openness about the fragility of happiness in marriage, employed or financially independent middle-class women no longer regarded marriage as necessary for financial support or self-respect. In magazine articles, single women compared their lives to those of their married friends and told readers that spinsterhood, with its financial and intellectual independence, could be a rational choice. Though social commentators worried and warned of loneliness, these bachelor women enjoyed the amenities and companionship afforded by an urban setting. Novelists distrusted the spinsters' advocacy of single-blessedness as stories ended with the new female protagonists marrying. A minority that some times wavered, the new spinsters, by demonstrating a respectable option, helped to reverse traditional scorn for old maids and to pave the way for those who would later demand, like men, to combine work and marriage.Keywords
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