"Nothing is more ridiculous than someone who says, upon learning that I never got married, 'Oh, you would like my Aunt! She never got married either. You two would have a lot in common.'" (from an interview, August 1984). In this timely and provocative study, Barbara Levy Simon interviews fifty American women, born between 1884 and 1918 who were never married, and examines their emphatic refusal to be "yoked by wifing," as one woman expressed it. A spirit of independence pervades these compelling self-portraits as the women describe the day-to-day activities, options and adaptations, as well as the stigma that shaped lives that defied the spinster stereotype. Simon explains: "I have written this book about them because I want others to learn, as I have, about the diversity of their experiences and perspectives. It is only by immersion in this variety that one can begin to comprehend the discrepancy between popular notions of 'old maids' and the actualities of single women's daily lives...Though women who have never married have often been judged, they have seldom been studied."
With care and empathy, the author presents women who lived at a time when not being married and being financially independent were considered deviant. From a variety of ethnic, religious, educational, and social groups, and ranging in age from sixty-six to one hundred and one years old, these women discuss the work they have loved or hated and their relations with family and friends. The autobiographical reflections provide insights about the symbolic and material worlds of never-married women and comparisons to the lives of single career women today. In the 1980s, a significantly higher proportion of American women are foregoing marriage than at any point in the past one hundred years. Simon confronts head-on the image of the passive and unhappy old maid, presenting instead a group of independent and self-actualizing women who, in many cases, chose to remain single. Author note: Barbara Levy Simon is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Columbia University.