The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1875-04-29
Old Maids.


Mrs. William Grey, of London, in a
recent lecture on "Old Maids" said /:
Z" An honorable member in a speech in
parliament called old maids social fail
ures.' a reverend gentleman who took
the chair at a meeting for promoting
the higher education of women, in
speaking of the half million of women
who are in excess of that number of
men in this country, and can therefore
not be paired, SAID women were by that
half million superhuous. In one of
Miss Austen's charming novels, Emma,
being told that she was an old maid,
says, Never mind, Harriet; I shall not
be a poor old maid The unmarried
lady of good fortune is a single woman,
and only the poor one is an old maid.
To consider the definitions in their or
der, in what sense is the old maid a
social failure? She has failed of matri-
mOny. 1t is understood in young
ladies' schools that it is a young lady
duty to get well married. If she sue
ceeds she takes for three months at
least the first place in every society If
she fail it is Ude UictiS. Mrs. Oliphant
describes woman whose youth is gone
and who is still obliged to think of
marrying as a provision, and who goes
into society as a laborious trade and yet
cannot stoop low enough, who looks
with envy even at the widow clothed in
the dignity of a great sorrow. To old
maids of this class the stigma does ap-
ply. They have failed. Passing to the
'superhuOus' theory, il involves the
uselessness of 800, 600 human brains,
500, 600 pairs of human hands, 500, 600
human minds and hearts. One recol-
lects the massacre of ST. Ursula and
IL 900 virgins at Cologne, and asks
oneself whether their murderers were
imbued with some such theory Of the
inutility of single women. The same
disregard for female existence, except
as it ministers TO male uses, lay at the
root of the ancient practice Of infanti-
eide. in Scinde, when a female child
was born to one of the princes it was
brought to hiEa in Durbar, and if he
did not approve of it it was put under
the cushion upon which he sat and ex.
tinguished by the gentle pressure of his
paternal weight. But were unmarried
women superfous In our own coun-
try alone they gave US IN literature
Miss Austen, Miss Edgewortb, Joanna
Baiilie, Harriet AIartineau, Frances
Power Cobbe. Was Elizabeth Barrett
81 kJC4AQOuS VII SIO OCIaA1G 41ASs
Bro WniDg? In science, was Miss Her
schell superhuous, whose labors were
invaluable to her father and brother
Was the devoted sister of the poet
Wordsworth superfuous In philan-
thrOpy could they count as too many
Florence Nightingale, Lady BUrdett-
Coutts, Mary Carpenter, OctaYia Hill,
and the great sisterhood of nurses of
every denomination, under every garb /?
Could we spare Miss Davies and Miss
Buss in education? AS to the third
view, that expressed by Miss Austen's
heroine. no wonder If women who, when
their home was broken up by death,
first learnt the worth of money became
soured by cares and disappointment,
and were not all like Miss Bates, de-
scribed by the same writer, who, though
tiresOme, chatteriHg, irrelevant, incoo
herent, with little sense and no beauly,
single and poor, was very much to the
taste of everybody Yes, she won the
world by loving. .heartedness, bOnse. Il
Is more than moral goodness, il is the
goodness which diffuses itself outward
" and socialIy-bounty. La b05lte est
IA cOQuetterie Ies UiciIies fenlnles, and
perhaps it IS the want of it that
makes old bachelors less amiable and
less useful without being more orna-
mental than old maids No doubt,
marriage was the highest form Of life
both for men and women, but there are