Women on Their Own

Published by Rutgers University Press 2007

Women on Their Own

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Being Single

With contributions by: Anne Byrne, Eileen Janes Yeo, Deborah Carr, Bettina Bradbury, Susan Ingalls Lewis, Ruth Crocker, Lee Chambers, Jennifer Gross, Catherine Kudlick, Elaine Abelson and Helen Safa
Edited by: Rudolph Bell and Virginia Yans

https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813544014

Overview
Contents

About this book

Despite what would seem some apparent likenesses, single men and single women are perceived in very different ways. Bachelors are rarely considered "lonely" or aberrant. They are not pitied. Rather, they are seen as having chosen to be "footloose and fancy free" to have sports cars, boats, and enjoy a series of unrestrictive relationships. Single women, however, do not enjoy such an esteemed reputation. Instead they have been viewed as abnormal, neurotic, or simply undesirable-attitudes that result in part from the long-standing belief that single women would not have chosen her life. Even the single career-woman is seldom viewed as enjoying the success she has achieved. No one believes she is truly fulfilled.

Modern American culture has raised generations of women who believed that their true and most important role in society was to get married and have children. Anything short of this role was considered abnormal, unfulfilling, and suspect. This female stereotype has been exploited and perpetuated by some key films in the late 40's and early 50's. But more recently we have seen a shift in the cultural view of the spinster. The erosion of the traditional nuclear family, as well as a larger range of acceptable life choices, has caused our perceptions of unmarried women to change. The film industry has reflected this shift with updated stereotypes that depict this cultural trend. The shift in the way we perceive spinsters is the subject of current academic research which shows that a person's perception of particular societal roles influences the amount of stress or depression they experience when in that specific role. Further, although the way our culture perceives spinsters and the way the film industry portrays them may be evolving, we still are still left with a negative stereotype.

Themes of choice and power have informed the lives of single women in all times and places. When considered at all in a scholarly context, single women have often been portrayed as victims, unhappily subjected to forces beyond their control. This collection of essays about "women on their own" attempts to correct that bias, by presenting a more complex view of single women in nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States and Europe.

Topics covered in this book include the complex and ambiguous roles that society assigns to widows, and the greater social and financial independence that widows have often enjoyed; widow culture after major wars; the plight of homeless, middle-class single women during the Great Depression; and comparative sociological studies of contemporary single women in the United States, Britain, Ireland, and Cuba.

Composed of papers presented to the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis project on single women, this collection incorporates the work of specialists in anthropology, art history, history, and sociology. It is deeply connected with the emerging field of singleness studies (to which the RCHA has contributed an Internet-based bibliography of more than 800 items). All of the essays are new and have not been previously published.

Reviews

"Bell and Yans are outstanding scholars who have addressed an under-examined and important aspect of women's history. This volume is both original and interesting.
"

— Carol Berkin, author of Revolutionary Mothers

"Women on Their Own extends across an impressive range of temporal and geographic distances to raise important issues in how we view the status of widows and single women in various historical periods and today."

— Andrew August, Abington College, Penn State University

"This book is an interesting investigation of choice and power-agency expressed by diverse single women. Recommended."

— Choice

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Rudolph M. Bell and Virginia Yans Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Single Women in Ireland Anne Byrne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
2. Virgin Mothers: Single Women Negotiate the Doctrine of Motherhood in Victorian and Edwardian Britain Eileen Janes Yeo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
3. Social and Emotional Well-Being of Single Women in Contemporary America Deborah Carr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
4. Widows at the Hustings: Gender, Citizenship, and the Montreal By-Election of 1832 Bettina Bradbury Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	82
5. Business Widows in Nineteenth-Century Albany, New York, 1813–1885 Susan Ingalls Lewis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
6. “His Absent Presence”: The Widowhood of Mrs. Russell Sage Ruth Crocker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	140
7. “Great Was the Benefit of His Death”: The Political Uses of Maria Weston Chapman’s Widowhood Lee V. Chambers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
8. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, Confederate Widows, and the Lost Cause: “We Must Not Forget or Neglect the Widows” Jennifer L. Gross Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	180
9. Modernity’s Miss-Fits: Blind Girls and Marriage in France and America, 1820–1920 Catherine Kudlick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
10. The Times That Tried Only Men’s Souls: Women, Work, and Public Policy in the Great Depression Elaine S. Abelson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
11. Globalization, Inequality, and the Growth of Female-Headed Households in the Caribbean Helen I. Safa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259

Language: English
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 272
Illustrations
- Other: 11 b&w illustrations

eBook

Published: December 6, 2007
ISBN: 9780813544014