Word: spinster
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...holiday�classic It's A Wonderful Life, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) sees what life would have been like had he never been born. His brother would be dead, his wife a spinster, Bedford Falls a hellhole, albeit one with more interesting nightlife...
Equally important is the attitudinal change. The dictionary once defined a spinster as an unmarried woman above a certain age: 30. If you passed that milestone without a partner, your best hope was to be seen as an eccentric Auntie Mame; your worst fear was to grow old like Miss Havisham, locked in her cavernous mansion, bitter after being ditched at the altar. Not anymore. "We've ended the spinster era," says Philadelphia psychotherapist Diana Adile Kirschner, who has made single women a focus of her practice. "Women used to tell me about isolation, living alone, low level of activity...
...hosts Handy Ma'am, a weekly home-improvement show on pbs, says she dreaded the hardware store for years, because salespeople kept asking, "Where's your husband?" And the Stone Age year when Anne Elizabeth, a Chicago artist, then 35, had to fight to not be listed as spinster on the mortgage application for her lakeside home...
...Siwi women have traditionally been kept behind closed doors or entirely concealed under flowing robes during rare ventures into town. The fact that they outnumber men in this conservative patriarchal society has made marriage the key to a woman's independence - unlucky was the girl who remained a spinster in her father's or brother's home, humbly tending to the needs of the other men and women in the family...
Breathy, blond Chloe; bitter, tweed-wearing Emily; and bland spinster Betty: that's a sample of the personas that former New York Times restaurant critic Reichl inhabited in her quest to remain anonymous to Manhattan's foodie establishment as she reviewed her way through highfalutin four-star eateries and dingy Japanese noodle shops. But this tasty (forgive me) chronicle of disguise--sentimental and hilarious--also conveys the sheer delight that people feel when sinking their teeth into a truly memorable meal...