Spinster Book Review

The official definition of a spinster is : an unmarried woman, typically an older woman beyond the usual age for marriage.

According the Census from last September, 105 million Americans 18 and older are not married. 53% are female, 47% are male.

In the 1950’s and early 1960’s half of all women were married. The average age of the women who were saying “I do” was 20.

In Kate Bolick’s new book, Spinster: Making A Life Of One’s Own, while writing about her previous romantic relationships, she writes about five noted women writers who chose to be single. The questions she asks about men, marriage, romantic relationships and work are timeless.

The women she writes about include Edna St. Vincent Millay, Neith Boyce, and Edith Wharton.

I enjoyed this book. Ms. Bolick does a nice job of entwining her own personal experience with the women whom she admires and writes about.

I recommend this book.

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International Women’s Day 2015

To celebrate International Women’s Day, I’d like to share a few quotes and videos from some of the trailblazers and fore-mothers who have come before us.

“The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand.

“If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”- Jane Austen, Persuasion

“A woman is like a tea bag-you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water”-Eleanor Roosevelt

“The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I’m thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.”-Erica Jong, Fear Of Flying