Repressed and thwarted, or bearer of the new world? the spinster in inter-war feminist discourses
Author: Oram, Alison1
Source: Women's History Review, Volume 1, Number 3, September 1992 , pp. 413-433(21)
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Abstract:
Early twentieth-century sexology and psychology lent new weight to popular representations of the spinster as unfulfilled and sexually repressed and, it has been suggested, silenced a feminist politics of spinsterhood. In this article I argue against this interpretation and discuss the writings of individual feminists who were actively engaged in both rejecting and reworking this view of the spinster. Feminist doctors, in a group of books about the single woman, used psychological theories of sublimation in a feminist appropriation of psycho-sexual ideas to assert that spinsters could lead a complete and happy life through work and female friendships. The feminist preacher, Maude Royden, offered an incorporation of this counter-psychology within a religious discourse in her sermons and publications. Thirdly, the writer Winifred Holtby rejected psychological and sexological definitions of single women's fate in her fiction and political writing and identified its roots in anti-feminism and a reaction against rational thought. These arguments and ideas were complemented by continued feminist campaigning and organising on a variety of issues concerning single women in the inter-war years.Document Type: Research article
DOI: 10.1080/09612029200200010
Affiliations: 1: Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom
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