Spinsters Quotes

The reason why women effect so little and are so shallow is because their aims are low, marriage is the prize for which they strive; if foiled in that they rarely rise above disappointment.

Could one count such dilettantes and old spinsters as that mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainlander, as a genuine German? In the last analysis he probably was a Jew (all Jews become mawkish when they moralize).

To remain single was thought a disgrace and at thirty an unmarried woman was called an old maid. After their parents died, what could they do, where could they go? If they had a brother, as unwanted and permanent guests, they might live in his house. Some had to maintain themselves and then, indeed, difficulty arose. The only paid occupation open to them a gentlewoman was to become a governess under despised conditions and a miserable salary. None of the professions were open to women; there were no women in Government offices; no secretarial work was done by them. Even nursing was disorganized and disreputable until Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale recreated it as a profession by founding the Nightingale School of Nursing in 1860.

Status ought not to be measured by a woman's ability to attract and snare a man..

Man is potentially a son, and woman is potentially a mother; woman depends on the dependence of man. The spinster, if pathetic at all, is pathetic because she has no one to look after, not because there is no one to look after her. Bear in mind that the conventional spinster keeps a canaary as a substitute for a husband.

Was this some new level of depravity? Had he developed a spinster fetish?

I put in my list all the busy, useful independent spinsters I know, for liberty is a better husband than love to many of us.

Not so very long ago, certainly well into the Thirties, a lady companion was a normal feature of life for widows or lone spinsters.

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

Right Jo better be happy old maids than unhappy wives or unmaidenly girls running about to find husbands.

To be unwed and female was to succumb to an illness with only one known cure: marriage.