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Old Maids: Short Stories by Nineteenth Century U.S. Women Writers
At 25 they were 'on the shelf.' But were they embittered spinsters or independent women?
The grim image of the 'old maid' as a ridiculous, pathetic, unlovable, unlovely and unloving creature has traditionally shadowed young women. Many have married unhappily, or submitted to constricting domestic roles, rather than face its terrors.
Susan Koppelman has discovered and collected this treasury of 'old maid' stories written - often by 'old maids' themselves - between 1835 and 1891 in the USA. With her substantial introduction as a guide, the reader is taken on an illuminating excursion into the parlours of the nineteenth century, as the voices of single women mark out the gradual shift between spinsterhood suffered and independence welcomed.
The grim image of the 'old maid' as a ridiculous, pathetic, unlovable, unlovely and unloving creature has traditionally shadowed young women. Many have married unhappily, or submitted to constricting domestic roles, rather than face its terrors.
Susan Koppelman has discovered and collected this treasury of 'old maid' stories written - often by 'old maids' themselves - between 1835 and 1891 in the USA. With her substantial introduction as a guide, the reader is taken on an illuminating excursion into the parlours of the nineteenth century, as the voices of single women mark out the gradual shift between spinsterhood suffered and independence welcomed.
- GenresShort Stories
234 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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About the author
Susan Koppelman
12 books3 followersSusan H. Koppelman (b. 1940) is a feminist literary historian and anthologist. The PCA/ACA's Susan Koppelman Award for Feminist Studies in Popular and American Culture is given in her honor.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 7, 2023
This book is a must for feminist scholars of 19th century fiction. Spanning the period between the 1840s and 1890s, each story in the collection examines what it means to be an old maid, often bumping the authors' favorable view of the unmarried state with social strictures that force her hand in the end. The back third is likely to be more appealing to modern readers, but the picture painted by the work as a whole is a clear one, as well as one that still feels relevant today.
July 3, 2017
The stories presented in this collection are:
"Old Maids" by Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1834)
"The Fortune Hunter" by Alice Ann Carter (1843)
"Mary and Ellen Grosvenor, or the Two Sisters" by Mrs. A.J. Graves (1844)
"Aunt Mable's Love Story" by Susan Pindar (1848)
"Old Maidism Versus Marriage" by Susan Petigru King (1854)
"Fruits of Sorrow, or an Old Maid's Story" by Mary C. Vaughan (1856)
"An Old Maid’s Story" by Alice Cary (1859)
"The Two Offers" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1859)
"Number 13" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1876)
"One Old Maid" by Marion Harland (1881)
"An Ignoble Martyr" by Rebecca Harding Davis (1890)
"Louisa" by Mary Eleanor Watkins (1891)
"How Celia Changed Her Mind" by Rose Terry Cooke (1891)
Although a couple of the later stories celebrated female independence, the overarching theme seemed to be that an "old maid" can be every bit as self-abnegating as any married woman raising children. Indeed, the notion that childless women (these old maids were always depicted as childless, otherwise we'd have to - gasp - address premarital sex) are innately selfish or immature is still very much alive today. While the modern childfree movement counters with assertions of empowerment and autonomy, Victorian defenders of the spinster emphasized their qualities as Christ-like martyrs whose tireless exertions extended beyond their own families. "How many married dames are there who repeat every fifteen minutes, my husband, my children, my house, and glorify themselves in all these little personalities, who might lay down their crowns at the feet of Violet Flint! - Miss Vily, the old maid," goes the first story. A later one, "Fruits of Sorrow," was published by a magazine called Ladies' Wreath whose mission statement proclaimed that, "On the mind of the youthful female we shall seek to impress the thought, that 'women are not to live for themselves' – that their mission from cradle to grave is one of benevolence and love; and that only in proportion to their reception of this truth, is their beneficial action on society at large." While certainly infuriating to many readers today, such support falls squarely under the rubric "Fair for Its Day."
The anthology is exclusively white, save for a single notable exception. "The Two Offers" is believed to be the first story by an African-American to be published in the United States. Interestingly, Harper wrote about white women, just as James Baldwin wrote about white gay men a century later in Giovanni's Room . While white suffragettes were wont to liken the plight of black slaves to that of white women in patriarchal society, they were less enthused when a black woman reversed the comparison. Editor Koppelman’s interpretation is that Harper intends a message to black men about what black women aspire to in freedom.
While the quality of the pieces varies (although none were poorly written), I found this an illuminating read nevertheless. I bought my copy at a fundraising garage sale for our local gay men's chorus and found a bookmark from Silkwood, a longtime lesbian/feminist bookstore that closed in the late '90s! It was the inspiration for Turning the Page , the debut novel of a prolific local author.
"Old Maids" by Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1834)
"The Fortune Hunter" by Alice Ann Carter (1843)
"Mary and Ellen Grosvenor, or the Two Sisters" by Mrs. A.J. Graves (1844)
"Aunt Mable's Love Story" by Susan Pindar (1848)
"Old Maidism Versus Marriage" by Susan Petigru King (1854)
"Fruits of Sorrow, or an Old Maid's Story" by Mary C. Vaughan (1856)
"An Old Maid’s Story" by Alice Cary (1859)
"The Two Offers" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1859)
"Number 13" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1876)
"One Old Maid" by Marion Harland (1881)
"An Ignoble Martyr" by Rebecca Harding Davis (1890)
"Louisa" by Mary Eleanor Watkins (1891)
"How Celia Changed Her Mind" by Rose Terry Cooke (1891)
Although a couple of the later stories celebrated female independence, the overarching theme seemed to be that an "old maid" can be every bit as self-abnegating as any married woman raising children. Indeed, the notion that childless women (these old maids were always depicted as childless, otherwise we'd have to - gasp - address premarital sex) are innately selfish or immature is still very much alive today. While the modern childfree movement counters with assertions of empowerment and autonomy, Victorian defenders of the spinster emphasized their qualities as Christ-like martyrs whose tireless exertions extended beyond their own families. "How many married dames are there who repeat every fifteen minutes, my husband, my children, my house, and glorify themselves in all these little personalities, who might lay down their crowns at the feet of Violet Flint! - Miss Vily, the old maid," goes the first story. A later one, "Fruits of Sorrow," was published by a magazine called Ladies' Wreath whose mission statement proclaimed that, "On the mind of the youthful female we shall seek to impress the thought, that 'women are not to live for themselves' – that their mission from cradle to grave is one of benevolence and love; and that only in proportion to their reception of this truth, is their beneficial action on society at large." While certainly infuriating to many readers today, such support falls squarely under the rubric "Fair for Its Day."
The anthology is exclusively white, save for a single notable exception. "The Two Offers" is believed to be the first story by an African-American to be published in the United States. Interestingly, Harper wrote about white women, just as James Baldwin wrote about white gay men a century later in Giovanni's Room . While white suffragettes were wont to liken the plight of black slaves to that of white women in patriarchal society, they were less enthused when a black woman reversed the comparison. Editor Koppelman’s interpretation is that Harper intends a message to black men about what black women aspire to in freedom.
While the quality of the pieces varies (although none were poorly written), I found this an illuminating read nevertheless. I bought my copy at a fundraising garage sale for our local gay men's chorus and found a bookmark from Silkwood, a longtime lesbian/feminist bookstore that closed in the late '90s! It was the inspiration for Turning the Page , the debut novel of a prolific local author.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews