Spinster, career woman, old maid, bachelor girl: of the many ways to describe single women, very few of them are complimentary. (The equivalent male list is shorter: bachelor, or perhaps the fun-sounding playboy.) That alone indicates some of the ‘concern’, let’s call it, with which the status of single female has been treated. Whether criticised, pitied, sometimes courted, they’ve always been singled out.
THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE
The term may now have negative connotations, but the original spinsters, spinners of cotton and wool – usually young girls, orphaned relatives and widows – were considered a respectable category of employment, earning a respectable income. Later, in France, it became a more descriptive term, simply women on their own, for whatever reason, who needed an income. But, with laws tying a woman’s…
