Word: spinsterhood
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More problematical is the fratricide to which Constance Kent confessed in 1865. A plain girl evidently slated for spinsterhood, Constance had been blighted by a callous stepmother. At 16, Constance cut the throat of her 3½-year-old half brother with such violence that the head was nearly severed. She then stuffed the body into the family privy. When the judge passed the death sentence (later commuted to life), his voice choked with sobs, and a local paper reported that the jury and "the greater part of the assembly" wept over the severity of the verdict...
...Portugal, the cash is hardly worth the loss in manpower. Whole villages have been left without able-bodied men, large tracts of farm land are lying idle, and the Portuguese press has begun to warn that tens of thousands of marriageable women face futures of spinsterhood. Salazar hoped to stem the tide last year by allowing a limited number of laborers to emigrate to France legally. Some 20,000 applicants left under the new labor scheme; but nearly 30,000 others took the illegal road with the smugglers...
...this opera, commissioned by the Ford Foundation, Librettist Kenward Elmslie has taken dramatic liberty with both fact and legend. Lizzie (Soprano Brenda Lewis), actually the younger Borden daughter, has become the older one, obsessed by fears of approaching spinsterhood, painfully exposed in a scene in which she tries on her sister's wedding dress. A domineering, miserly father and a self-centered, vindictive stepmother create a stifling, explosive atmosphere in which Lizzie's chilling actions become more plausible...
...nations of Southeast Asia have enough trouble already with Chinese minorities and are dead-set against bringing in more refugees from the mainland. Hastening their extinction is the fact that many of the finer amahs are Cantonese women who traditionally belong to kongsis, or sisterhoods, that pledge them to spinsterhood. Amahs from Hainan, on the other hand, are usually married. Their husbands used to be admirable Crichtons of colonial society, and their daughters in time used to follow mother's footsteps across the gleaming floors. Though well-trained amahs nowadays earn up to $70 a month-a high wage...
...Spinsterhood is declining. In 1940, 15% of women in their early 30s had never been married; in 1960, only 7%. > Nearly two out of three U.S. women are married by age 21. One out of every eight girls in college is married. >Wives now in their early 30s are expected to have an average 3.4 children. > The illegitimacy rate has tripled in the past 25 years. One out of every 20 babies born today is illegitimate. There were 89,000 children born out of wedlock in 1940, 141,000 in 1950, and 224,000 in 1960. Of the 1960 figure...