Word: spinsterhood
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...girl of the middle classes and up is on no Nordic romantic pedestal but serene in her father's provision of a suitable marriage portion practically guaranteed to attract an acceptable fiance. Or if there is no money for a dot then she rationally faces the alternatives of spinsterhood in its more or less appetizing forms. These in France can be either. The French spinster escapes certain laws which her smugly married sisters take as a matter of course, laws which definitely make the French husband master in his home. For example, a wife cannot go on the stage...
...fiercely with his wife about her extravagance. Overawed and tormented by an older sister, Harriet was educated in a convent in Georgetown, D. C., grew dreamy, introspective and so romantic that her admirers were unable to measure up to her ideal of a lover. She had resigned herself to spinsterhood, had published a few verses, when in 1891 she got the commission to write a poem for the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition. Opponents wanted to replace her with John Greenleaf Whittier, then 85. Despite illness, an operation, a nervous attack, Harriet Monroe finished...
Died. H. R. H. Princess Victoria Alexandra Olga Mary, 67, sister of George V; of stomach hemorrhage; at Coppins, Iver, Buckinghamshire. Princess Victoria's retired life and spinsterhood were popularly attributed to an early love affair with a man whom her rank forbade her to marry...
Flora, a beautiful and well-to-do woman verging on spinsterhood, had the dangerous idea of inviting all her friends for a weekend. Her friends, like most lovely women's friends, were not friends; some of them were enthusiastic enemies. They arrived, in various stages of intoxication, exhaustion and disgust, sank further into their emotional states when they saw who their fellow-guests were. The happily married scientists were embarrassed, tried not to show it. The mousy banker, Flora's tame cat, who had been picked up by a golddigger en route, had no eyes for anyone...
...upper middleclass, Boer War vintage, was spoiled, conservative, selfish, in trade (kippers) but with the pretensions of a gentleman. His wife's buxomness had hardened into armor plate. Tilly, who died young, became the family saint. Cora married a doctor, went to London. Meg simmered and soured into spinsterhood. Ethel, the best of the lot, rushed into marriage with a beef-eating young naval officer. Anemic Bertram got a job in India, toyed with mysticism and was homesick. As they grew into pre-War maturity they all became hopelessly more & more the same thing...