Spinster Essays

  • Miss Havisham in Great Expectations

    2449 Words  | 5 Pages

    In Great Expectations, Dickens depicts an eccentric character in Miss Havisham. The unmarried Miss Havisham seems to both conform to and deny the societal standards of unmarried women in the Victorian Age. Spinsters and old maids display particular attitudes and hold certain functions in the society. Miss Havisham's character shows how one woman can both defy and strengthen these characteristics. She, along with several other female characters in the novel, supports the fact that unmarried

  • Use of Allegories in A New England Nun

    1725 Words  | 4 Pages

    Use of Allegories in A New England Nun In "A New England Nun", Mary E. Wilkins Freeman depicts the life of the classic New England spinster. The image of a spinster is of an old maid; a woman never married waiting for a man. The woman waiting to be married is restricted in her life. She does chores and receives education to make her more desirable as a wife. This leads to the allegories used in this short story. The protagonist life paralleled both of her pets' lives, her

  • Spinster

    1260 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the poem “Spinster” by Sylvia Plath, a girl and her lover take a walk through the woods on a spring day. As they are walking, the lover attempts to make romantic gestures towards the girl, which frightens her. The girl’s physical withdrawal from spring and her act of embracing winter is a metaphor for her fear of love and longing for the predictability and control that is not found in love. While on their walk through the woods, the disorganization that the girl feels emphasizes the girl’s discomfort

  • Erikson And The Spinster

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    Erikson and the Spinster: An Essay Exam According to Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, culture and society often play a central role in fostering conflict within the ego of a healthy developing individual. Erikson maintained that one’s sense of self develops as the individual successfully resolves predicaments that are derived from a social foundation. Erikson’s model assumes that a crisis will occur at each of the eight stages of growth. Successful completion of a stage results

  • Spinster, by Sylvia Plath

    980 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Spinster” by Sylvia Plath is a poem that consists of a persona, who in other words serves as a “second self” for the author and conveys her innermost feelings. The poem was written in 1956, the same year as Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes, who was also a poet. The title suggests that the persona is one who is not fond of marriage and the normal rituals of courtship as a spinster is an unmarried woman, typically an older woman who is beyond the usual age of marriage and may never marry. The persona

  • A Story of a Spinster in Regret by Kate Chopin,

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    “So she was quite alone in the world, except for her dog Ponto.” Kate Chopin’s “Regret” is the story of an elderly spinster who is burdened with the task of watching her neighbors four kids. The story is said to take place in rural Louisiana some time around the nineteenth century. Through this story Chopin portrays how people find regret in the most unlikely of places. Katherine Chopin was born on February 8, 1850 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was bilingual and could speak both French and English

  • Defining the Victorian Woman

    1601 Words  | 4 Pages

    married in many respects, such as their personal rights. In addition, the census of 1850 "revealed a significant imbalance between the sexes," creating a surplus of single women (Lerner 176). Many of these single women joined the ranks of spinsters and old maids due to this imbalance in the population. However, society did not give unmarried women the same roles as married women. Society challenged these women because it believed that a woman without a husband was worthless. Society

  • FEMINIST CRITISM OF THE STONE CARVERS

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    The feminist approach of the Stone Carvers allows us to look at Klara’s role as a spinster in a new perspective. It allows us to analyze the role of a woman in the first half of the twentieth century. A woman’s role in the early twentieth century still revolved around serving the male members of one’s family. Klara was tied to the traditional role of a female. She would have chores as well as having to make supper for her father, grand father and sometimes Eamon. Klara was more independence than

  • Critical Analysis Of Sarah Ensor's The Country Of The Pointed Firs

    1918 Words  | 4 Pages

    material collected, the researcher further analyze and explore Sarah Ensor’s argument about the “spinster” from her review the “Spinster Ecology: Rachel Carson, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Nonproductive Futurity”. It will then be contrasted from Heather Love’s book, “Feeling Backward: Loss and Politics of Queer History”. Sarah Ensor subscribes to a different teleological approach when discussing the spinster ecology and nonproductive futility in Sarah Orne Jewett’s novel, The Country of Pointed Firs. Her

  • Conformity and Subjugation in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'

    1470 Words  | 3 Pages

    The narrator is confined to a large and prestigious estate in the backwoods of a rural area. She feels as if she is trapped like an agoraphobic spinster who has very little social life. Even though almost all elite upper class women of that time period were seen and acted like socialites, such as today’s wealthy new money upper class of high paid lawyers, doctors, financiers, and business executives

  • Dominick Argento's The Masque Of Angels

    1295 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dominick Argento’s The Masque of Angels is a short opera which is not often performed, yet displays great use of Argento’s composition style. The Masque of Angels encompasses serialism aspects of twentieth century opera, as well as twentieth-century adaptation of the English masque through the composer’s use of atonality, symbolism and twelve-tone writing. Dominick Argento was born in York, Pa., in 1927. He attended Peabody Conservatory where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and attended

  • Overview of Miss Marple

    1364 Words  | 3 Pages

    her autobiography about one of her most famous characters, the elderly female amateur detective Miss Jane Marple. It is doubtful, however, whether a “precocious schoolboy” would have ever reached the same worldwide fame as the sweet, but shrewd, spinster lady from St Mary Mead, who has won our hearts ever since her first appearance in The Murder at the Vicarage. By referring to three descriptive Miss Marple novels, The Murder at Vicarage, A Pocket full of Rye and A Murder is Announced, this paper

  • The Verification Principle

    823 Words  | 2 Pages

    Firstly, statements that can be verified using internal logic and grammar are analytic. For example, “all spinsters are unmarried”. Everything needed to verify the statement is included in the statement itself since the definition of a spinster in an unmarried woman. Secondly, statements that can be verified using external sense data are said to be synthetic. For example, “Jane is a spinster”. We would need to find Jane and ask her about her marital status-this would provide the external sense

  • The two Duffy poems I have chosen to compare the way she presents

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    The two Duffy poems I have chosen to compare the way she presents the speaker’s relationship with the person she is speaking to are Havisham and Elvis Twin Sister. Havisham is in a form of a monologue. Choose two Duffy Poems. Compare the way she presents the speaker’s relationship with the person she is speaking to (or about) Most of Carol Ann Duffy’s poems are about love, but that does not always mean that they contain positive connotations. Some contain positive where as quite a few

  • Summary Of Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill

    1117 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Loneliness of the Spinster and Widower “The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.” ― Voltaire The short story “Miss Brill” is misleading and illusory. The author, Katherine Mansfield, uses third person limited to take readers along into Miss Brill, the protagonist’s, delusions. The story is set in the 1920’s France, on a nice Sunday afternoon. The tone starts

  • Analysis Of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's A New England Nun

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    and peace. However, if Louisa doesn’t marry Joe, she would risk her reputation in her community. It was the norm for a woman her age to get married and raise a family. Becoming a spinster in her society back then is a social stigma. No one is treated with more ridicule than an old maid. Louisa chooses to become a spinster instead of getting married. However, she can feel it that this upcoming marriage was making her feel uneasy about her future. Every time Joe came to visit her for an hour, she

  • A Rose For Emily Feminist Essay

    1851 Words  | 4 Pages

    Topic Proposal: Feminist Approach to A Rose for Emily In William Faulkner’s pervasive story, the character in A Rose for Emily represents the idea of a woman’s place in society which questions the roles that were susceptible for woman. Due to a patriarchal power held over her for the majority of her life, she is unable to take control and spirals into a distortion of the way life and death is carried out. She represents the tension and struggle between the past and modernity taking the belief that

  • Narrative Style and Character in James Joyce's Clay

    608 Words  | 2 Pages

    The brief format of the short story does not allow for great lengths of detail to be included therefore, alternate writing styles are used. James Joyce adopts the free and indirect narrative technique to present the story of Maria the suppressive spinster in his short story "Clay." This particular approach influences the reader to sympathize with Joyce's flawed character, while ironically pointing out the particular flaws and directing them towards Irish society. Dubliners is a collection of short

  • Rose For Emily Setting

    867 Words  | 2 Pages

    Written in 1930, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is a compelling tale of a southern spinster. Faulkner described the title as “an allegorical title, the meaning was, here was a woman who has had a tragedy and nothing could be done about it, and I pitied her and this was a solute… to the woman you would hand a rose.” (“Colloquies at Nagano Seminar” Faulkner). The story seems as if it would be an average short tale about an old, finicky, haughty southern lady who just wants her way in life,

  • The English Language Systematically Degrades and Devalues Women

    803 Words  | 2 Pages

    possible argument in agreement with this statement is that male words and their female equivalents are often asymmetrical in their connotations and implications. For example, pairs of words such as ‘bachelor’ and ‘spinster’, have distinctively different associations: ‘spinster’ has relatively negative undertones, and conjures the image of an aging woman with a dull lifestyle, whereas the word ‘bachelor’ suggests a more carefree, younger man with an exciting and enjoyable way of life. This