Spinster

"Old maid" redirects here. For other uses, see Old Maid (disambiguation).

A poem entitled "It won't be my fault if I die an Old Maid", containing the lines "Remember no thought to a girl is so dread / As the terrible one—She may die an Old Maid."

A spinster is a woman who reached the age of majority and who has never been married. Besides its use in society, the term is, or has been, used in legal documents in English-speaking nations to describe a never-married woman.

The term stirs debate in contemporary usage, as it describes the marital status of women with connotations on their social merits. Several dictionaries flag it as a derogatory term.

Etymology and history

An etymology dictionary says of the Word Origin & History:

spinster: mid-14c., "female spinner of thread," from M.E. spinnen (see spin) + -stere, feminine suffix. Spinning commonly done by unmarried women, hence the word came to denote "an unmarried woman" in legal documents from 1600s to early 1900s, and by 1719 was being used generically for "woman still unmarried and beyond the usual age for it."

Another source on etymology says the word took on its meaning of a never-married woman in the early 18th century: Origin late Middle English (in the sense 'woman who spins'): from the verb spin + -ster; in early use the term was appended to names of women to denote their occupation. The current sense dates from the early 18th century.

The term originally identified girls and women who spun wool, long before the industrial age. In medieval times, this was one of the few livelihoods available to a woman to bring in wages to contribute to the household's income or to live independently of a male wage. "Spinster" also evolved into a legal term to describe an unmarried female, commonly heard in the banns of marriage of the Church of England when the prospective bride is formally described as a "spinster of this parish".

From its start as a word to describe a woman with a specific occupation, spinster came to indicate a woman or girl of marriageable age or past it who was not married and never had been married, in societies where being married was generally the first social goal for a woman.

Merriam Webster's Dictionary (1913 and 1828) once defined spinster in two main senses: "1. A woman who spins, or whose occupation is to spin. 2. Law: An unmarried or single woman."

By the 19th century, the term evolved to include women who were so finicky that they refused to marry. During that century

middle-class spinsters, as well as their married peers, took ideals of love and marriage very seriously, and ... spinsterhood was indeed often a consequence of their adherence to those ideals. ... They remained unmarried not because of individual shortcomings but because they didn't find the one "who could be all things to the heart".

During that same century, one editorial in the fashion publication Peterson's Magazine encouraged women to remain choosy in selecting a mate — even at the price of never marrying. The editorial, titled "Honorable Often to Be an Old Maid," advised women: "Marry for a home! Marry to escape the ridicule of being called an old maid? How dare you, then, pervert the most sacred institution of the Almighty, by becoming the wife of a man for whom you can feel no emotions of love, or respect even?"

Current use, debate and social stigma

Presently, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines spinster in these three ways:

• 1: a woman whose occupation is to spin
• 2a archaic: an unmarried woman of gentle family
• 2b: an unmarried woman and especially one past the common age for marrying
• 3: a woman who seems unlikely to marry

Similarly, Dictionary.com describes "spinster" as an unmarried woman beyond the usual age of marriage, along with some other, less common definitions:

• 1. Disparaging and Offensive. a woman still unmarried beyond the usual age of marrying.
• 2. Chiefly Law. a woman who has never married.
• 3. a woman whose occupation is spinning.
• Usage note The meaning “a woman beyond the usual marriageable age” is used with disparaging intent and perceived as insulting. It implies negative qualities such as being fussy or undesirable. See also old maid.

The U.S. Oxford dictionary offers another definition, flagging the word as derogatory : "An unmarried woman, typically an older woman beyond the usual age for marriage." The note on usage adds Usage The development of the word spinster is a good example of the way in which a word acquires strong connotations to the extent that it can no longer be used in a neutral sense. From the 17th century, the word was appended to names as the official legal description of an unmarried woman: Elizabeth Harris of Boston, Spinster. This type of use survives today only in some legal and religious contexts. In modern everyday English, however, spinster cannot be used to mean simply ‘unmarried woman’; as such, it is a derogatory term, referring or alluding to a stereotype of an older woman who is unmarried, childless, prissy, and repressed.

Age is a crucial part of the definition. "If someone is a spinster, by implication she is not eligible [to marry]; she has had her chance, and been passed by," explains Robin Lakoff in Language and Woman's Place. "Hence, a girl of twenty cannot be properly called a spinster: she still has a chance to be married." "In modern everyday English," the New Oxford American Dictionary says, "spinster cannot be used to mean simply 'unmarried woman'; it is now always a derogatory term, referring or alluding to a stereotype of an older woman who is unmarried, childless, prissy, and repressed." A "spinster" is not simply a "single" woman, but a woman who has not formed a human pair bond by the time she is approaching or has reached menopause and the end of her reproductive lifespan. Yet other sources on terms describing a never-married woman indicate that the term applies to a woman as soon as she is of legal age or age of majority (see bachelorette, single).

The title "spinster" has been embraced by feminists like Sheila Jeffreys, whose 1985 book The Spinster and Her Enemies defines spinsters simply as women who have chosen to reject sexual relationships with men.

Writing in response to a recent book on women being single, Claudia Connell says Every birthday I have celebrated since the age of 35 has brought with it one guarantee – among the cards will be one depicting an old crone in fingerless gloves, surrounded by dozens of cats. It's a joke apparently, directed at the fact that I am a single – because all unmarried women eventually turn into crazy cat ladies, don't you know. Connell's article is titled, Don't call me a spinster! For a woman, being unmarried or never married continues to provoke controversy and much discussion; one reviewer of Sara Eckel's book remarked: When I’m ambivalent about addressing a particular topic, sometimes hearing from readers tips the balance. That just happened with Sara Eckel’s new book, It’s not you: 27 (wrong) reasons you’re single, and the press about it. Enough people have asked me what I think that I just had to take a look. Another reviewer said: Rather than using her past as woman who married in her 40s after being single for most of her 20s and 30s to put single people down, Eckel provides a compassionate take on both the external and internal pressures that they face in a society structured around couples and families. While her book isn’t explicitly marketed as feminist, she doesn’t hesitate to say that, no, feminism is not ruining your love life. What does ruin one’s relationship to their love life is the barrage of messages single women receive that suggest that their relationship status is a reflection of who they are as a person. A woman being unmarried, and the terms used to describe her, provoke discussion, as this one recent book indicates.

At least one study found that modern spinsters feel a social stigma attached to their status, and a sense of both heightened visibility and invisibility. "Heightened visibility came from feelings of exposure, and invisibility came from assumptions made by others."

In this first sense, the term is, or has been, used in legal documents in English-speaking nations, and once identified any unmarried woman, as "bachelor" was used to identify men. However, a "spinster" may also connote not simply a never-married woman, but a woman who has not formed a human pair bond by the time she is approaching or has reached menopause and the end of her reproductive lifespan.

The term was once "the official legal description of an unmarried woman....In modern everyday English ... spinster cannot be used to mean simply 'unmarried woman'; as such, it is a derogatory term, referring or alluding to a stereotype of an older woman who is unmarried, childless, prissy, and repressed."

The term once described any single woman. However, it has since evolved to only refer to older, unmarried women. As a result, in England and Wales, the term was abolished in favour of "single" for the purpose of marriage registration in 2005.

Reasons women do not marry

Women may not marry for a variety of reasons, including the available pool of men, which can decrease dramatically during wartime and the economic structure of society (that is, the existence of occupations for women that earn money). For long centuries, work done by women was part of a household. With industrialization, jobs that paid women money arose, allowing woman to work at such jobs as part of a married household or alone.

For instance, the First World War prevented a generation of women from experiencing romance and marriage, or having children. The image of the old spinster with a fading photo of her dead World War I soldier boyfriend on her fireplace mantel was common in films of the 1950s and 1960s. Likewise, in the American classic novel Gone with the Wind (1936) about the Civil War, numerous references are made to grieving fiancées, women who were "wanted, if not wed", and to the shortage of single, able-bodied (and thus "marriageable") men at war's end.

In modern peacetime societies with wide opportunities for romance, marriage and children, there are other reasons that available women remain single as they approach old age. Psychologist Erik Erikson postulated that during young adulthood (ages 18 to 35), individuals experience an inner conflict between a desire for intimacy (i.e., a committed relationship leading to marriage) and a desire for isolation (i.e., fear of commitment).

Popular culture

Spinsters have been the focus of attention from the media and mainstream culture for centuries.

Events

In Australia, parties are held for young single people to meet and socialize (particularly in the rural areas). These events are known as Bachelor and Spinster Balls or colloquially "B and S Balls". Dances which women ask men to attend are known as Sadie Hawkins dances in the United States.

Media

There has been recent (2010s) interest in this word as a form of reappropriation from Third-wave feminists. Recent examples include several blogs/videos, such as: reclaimingthepejorative, a Bitch Magazine article, and the Sinister House YouTube channel.

Film

Many classic and modern films have depicted stereotypical spinster characters. In the classic Now, Voyager (1942), Bette Davis portrayed Charlotte Vale, an unattractive, overweight, repressed spinster whose life is dominated by her dictatorial mother, an aristocratic Boston dowager whose verbal and emotional abuse of her daughter has contributed to the woman's complete lack of self-confidence. She played another spinster named Charlotte in Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Katharine Hepburn specialized in playing spinsters in the 1950s such as Rosie in The African Queen (1951), Jane Hudson in Summertime (1955), and Lizzie in The Rainmaker (1956). The fictional character Bridget Jones often refers to herself as a spinster in the film Bridget Jones's Diary (1996). The documentary Cat Ladies (2009) spins a tale of four spinsters whose lives have become dedicated to their cats.

Literature

In both The Taming of the Shrew (early 1590's) and Much Ado About Nothing (late 1590's), William Shakespeare referred to a contemporary saying that it was the fate of women who died unmarried to lead apes into hell. By the time of the British Regency, "ape leader" had become a slang term for "old maid". It is often used in that context in Regency romances and other literature set in that period. The books Washington Square and The Heiress have old maid heroines who ultimately choose to remain spinsters and embrace the freedom of not having to enter marriage.

One stereotype of spinsters that appears in literature is that they are downtrodden or spineless women who were victims of an oppressive parent. This stereotype is played out in William Faulkner's classic short story "A Rose for Emily" (1930), in which Emily's father is confident that no man is worthy of his daughter's hand in marriage. Other stereotypes include women who were relegated to lifetime roles as family caretaker for their family of origin or for a married sibling's children, "poor relations" who would work "to earn their keep" as nannies or unpaid domestics. Being a governess was the fate expected by rejected orphan Jane Eyre in the 1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë, a status she kept until the man she loved was widowed and available.

A common theme in the fiction writings of author/poet Sandra Cisneros is marital disillusionment; she has written the poem "Old Maids" (1994).

In the Dickens's classic Great Expectations, the primary antagonist is Miss Havisham, a spinster embittered by being defrauded and abandoned on her wedding day; an event that shaped the rest of her life, and by extension, those around her.

Music

The Bob Dylan song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (1963) tells the true story of a murder at a spinsters' ball in Baltimore in 1963. Paul McCartney, while in the band The Beatles, composed a hit song "Eleanor Rigby" in 1966 about the loneliness and death of a spinster (though never using the term in the lyrics).

Television

Tina Fey's portrayal of her character Liz Lemon, on the hit NBC series 30 Rock exemplifies another classic spinster stereotype. Lemon, a 40-something single woman whose relationships never seem to work out, has unrealistically high expectations of what she is looking for in a man: her dream husband is the archetypal "Astronaut Mike Dexter", and for much of the series her character is holding out on settling on a man until she can score an astronaut.

Other uses

Unpopped popcorn kernels have been dubbed "old maids" in popular slang, since like unmarried women who never had children, the kernels do not "pop".

See also

• Bachelor
• Bachelorette
• Cat lady
• Catherinette
• Fear of commitment
• Moirai
• Sheng nu
• Single
• Weaving (mythology)

External links

• Spinster: An Evolving Stereotype Revealed Through Film, by Deborah J. Mustard
• Goodbye to the Spinster by Wendy Braitman
• Barbie: Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride by Wendy Braitman