Word: spinsterism
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Died. Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow, 71, realistic novelist of the new South; of a heart attack; in Richmond. A spinster who never went to school, she wrote her first story at seven, her 20th and last novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning In This Our Life, at 68. Between the two she cultivated muscular ethics, a sinewy style, the flaccid enmity of the old South. To the1 impact of her novels, a critic testified: "Southern romance is dead. Ellen Glasgow has murdered...
...freckled, 33-year-old spinster, with a big nose and intense brown eyes, felt drawn to Mohandas Gandhi after reading a book about him. She was Madeline Slade, daughter of British Admiral Sir Edmond Slade. She left England to join Gandhi, became his personal attendant, took the name of Miraben (Sister Mira) from the Rajput Princess Mira who abandoned all to follow the Hindu god Krishna. Miraben was jailed twice for her part in the civil disobedience movement...
They listened with mild interest. Finally the speaker mentioned the U.S. policy of atomic secrecy. The audience stirred to nervous attention. Then 62-year-old Annie Yates, a spinster charwoman, rose to say: "We want all those atom-bomb places opened for us all to know what's going on in them." The citizens of Darwen broke into applause...
...Status Quo, Prudishness and Decay. On Life's side, along with a young flyer, is the young heroine's father (Edmund Gwenn), a rum-soaked old sea captain full of Elizabethan gusto; on Stagnation's side is the heroine's aunt (Catherine Willard), a snooping spinster full of Victorian gentility. The trouble with such highly contrasted symbols is that they themselves are virtually burlesques: almost everything the old maid does smacks of melodrama, almost everything the old soak does smacks of farce...
...much like the real thing. But as a piece of melodramatic, patriotic entertainment it has its points. The producer's feminine touch can be seen in some intricately propped interiors and a very pretty sequence of a rain-drenched funeral procession. Gracie Fields' performance as the English spinster is near perfect. And Connie Bennett herself, who has lost nothing of her tough, wiry glamor with the years, gives fine style and energy to the international-smart-set aspects of her role. But she is unable to show deep emotion, physical suffering, or simple embarrassment...