Spinster
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A spinster, or old maid, is an older, childless woman who has never been married. For a woman to be identified as a spinster, age is critical. A "spinster" is not simply a "single" woman, but a woman who has not formed a human pair bond by the time she is approaching or has reached menopause and the end of her reproductive lifespan. "If someone is a spinster, by implication she is not eligible (to marry); she has had her chance, and been passed by," explains Robin Lakoff in Language and Woman's Place. "Hence, a girl of twenty cannot be properly called a spinster: she still has a chance to be married." "In modern everyday English," the New Oxford American Dictionary says, "spinster cannot be used to mean simply ‘unmarried woman’; it is now always a derogatory term, referring or alluding to a stereotype of an older woman who is unmarried, childless, prissy, and repressed." The title "spinster" has nevertheless been embraced by feminists like Sheila Jeffreys, whose 1985 book The Spinster and Her Enemies defines spinsters simply as women who have chosen to reject sexual relationships with men. Contents
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GNU Free Documentation License Nounspinster (plural spinsters)
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GNU Free Documentation License Matching Results for Spinster:Arsenic and Old LaceArsenic and Old Lace is a 1944 film about a drama critic who must cope with his bizarre extended family on his wedding day, including his two spinster ... Eliza Calvert Hall Lida Obenchain, writing with the pen name Eliza Calvert Hall, advocated for the ... late 19th Century, recounts an elderly spinster Aunt Jane's memories of life in ... The Great Race [to Maggie DuBois] You talk a good fight, but when it comes down to it, you're as emancipated as a confirmed spinster in a knitting bee. [edit] Others ... From Wikiquote under the
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