Article: "THE BEST OR NONE!" SPINSTERHOOD IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY NEW ENGLAND.

Reflecting on her single life, Catharine Sedgwick wrote in her diary: "I certainly think a happy marriage the happiest condition of human life ... [I]t is the high opinion of its capabilities which has perhaps kept me from adventuring in it." [1] This entry epitomizes the seemingly paradoxical connection, in practice, between the nineteenth-century idealization of marriage and the reluctance of many women to marry. Although Nancy Cott has made passing references to this connection, it has been largely overlooked by the literature on women and the family. [2] Spinsterhood has usually been viewed either as individual misfortune or as a manifestation of protofeminist ...

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