The reign of Queen Victoria in Great
Britain, 1837 to 1901, was a period in which Britain
rose to powerful heights. It built a great colonial
empire, realized tremendous domestic industrial
expansion, and the British people gained a new respect
for their monarchy due to the hard work and genuine
concern Victoria showed them. This period in history has
come to be called the Victorian Era and it became a
turning point in British and American social history,
ushering in new moral attitudes along with the steady
growth and emergence of society’s newest economic
group, the Middle Class.
Struggling to positively distinguish
itself from the lower working classes and feeling itself
to be hereditarily inferior to the aristocratic upper
classes, the Middle Class began to form it’s own
structure, and that foundation rested mainly upon the
women of the group. Based on high moral standards,
strict rules of conduct in marriage and courtship, and a
public lifestyle that would reflect pious dignity, women
of the Middle Class were carefully conditioned and
expected to live up to a specific code of behavior. The
ultimate goal of which was marriage. It became the duty
of every woman of the Middle Class to marry and produce
children, preferably boys to inherit the newfound status
and wealth of the class.
In America, the years of the Victorian
Era were years of upward mobility and economic
advancement, but only for men. Women were forced into
one of 2 roles, those of the lower classes went into
low-paying, dead-end jobs in the fledging factories,
such as spinsters, or sought employment as governess’
and various other domestic jobs. While women of the
middle and upper middle classes were taught not to work
outside the home and schooled as genteel ladies of
fashion, confined to a strict and narrow role in the
home as wife, mother, and hostess, subject always to
their father’s, brother’s, or husband’s approval
and control. Because of the new status the middle
classes were compelled to create, there was a fiercely
competitive aspect to the perceived moral differences.
It shouldn’t be surprising then that here is when the
stereotype of the Spinster solidified, gained momentum,
and spread throughout all aspects of society and life.
Countless manuals on ethics, hygiene, and etiquette were
written and circulated as well as religious pamphlets
and medical articles stressing to women the ideals of
virtue and chastity and that Love proceeded according to
an established set of natural laws. As long as women
followed these specific guidelines, they preserved their
sobriety, propriety, modesty, and conformity, and
health; and, of course, fulfilled their purpose which
was to ensure the comfort, support, and continuation of
the male population. But what were some of those
guidelines?
The purity authors of the day,
Sylvester Graham, William Acton, and Mary Wood-Allen,
advised girls and young women to always leave the
matters of courtship in the hands of the young men and
to play a completely passive role. A lady was to
maintain at all times a strict modesty, never show the
slightest evidence that a young man’s love was
reciprocated until he had officially declared honorable
(matrimonial) intentions to her father, and never to
allow herself to be led into situations where she could
be kissed. Even if all the rules were followed, there
was always a real possibility that her father might
reject the advances of the young man, finding him an
unsuitable match for his daughter, or the young man
could die before he acquired the necessary business,
property, or wealth he would need to economically
support himself and a wife. Too many factors, most of
them economic, worked against young ladies in the 19th
Century for them to be comfortable or confident in their
passive position. Purity leaders, however, encouraged
women to accept their destined role with grace and
dignity, while at the same time condemning those who
were not dutifully married by the time they reached 25
years of age. Should intelligent young women question
their so called destiny, they were generally reprimanded
and shown carefully chosen examples by their elders to
bring them back into line. One such example is that of
the Spinster.
Unmarried women of the lower classes,
mostly uneducated in the ways of genteel ladies and
generally employed as spinsters in American textile
factories, were held in contempt or pitied by the women
of the Middle Classes. While there was as much pressure
on girls in the working classes to be “good girls”
and marry, they were not drilled with or held to the
same rules of aloofness, passiveness, or false-modesty
that confined Middle Class women. Nor were they schooled
in the popular medical belief that young men were unable
to control their “animal urges” and that it was a
woman’s responsibility to be physically uninterested
so that the male “urges” would be tamed and
manageable. More often than not, they were subjected to
ruthless use and/or abuses during the duration of their
mill employment, which could begin at 8 years of age and
continue until the girl reached 25 years of age. This
put their reputations as “good girls” into constant
question, reducing their marriage ability potential.
The economic situation of the
Spinsters did not allow for most of the conventions that
restrained young men and women of the upper class, such
as requiring chaperones in public, thus the spinsters
seemed more free to show their emotions, reciprocate the
love of a young man, or allow themselves to be kissed on
occasion in order to obtain a beau. Unfortunately, this
freedom was easily taken advantage of by unscrupulous
Middle Class young men who professed affection freely
without any intentions of marriage. Countless stories
were told of naive young spinsters who gave their
affection to young men of the upper classes only to be
rejected by him later and told of his upcoming marriage
to a lady from a good, and wealthier, family. A young
Spinster’s, and her relatively poor family’s,
outrage, hurt, and protests of such insensitive and
indiscreet behavior would usually be disregarded by the
young man’s family and denied by the young man
himself.
She asked for it, they would say, and
deserves nothing for her efforts to catch a rich husband
like my son. Watch out, those spinsters are always doing
things to trap our wealthy unsuspecting young men into
marriage. And this is only one example of how the Middle
Class morality justified its actions.
These justifications became, in a
relatively short amount of time, facts of life. Spinster
became synonymous with all unmarried women, whether they
had never been married or they were widowed and chose
not to remarry, despite their socio-economic position.
As more opportunities in the Nursing and Teaching
professions opened to women, they were filled by a large
percentage of unmarried women who were pressured by
their patriarchal families, and some by their own sense
of independence, to contribute economic support. By the
turn of the 20th Century, the image of the Spinster that
we have today was firmly ingrained in the minds of the
American people.
