Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England by Amy M. Froide

Abstract

pp. xiv + 273. ISBN 978 0415358170 (hb); 978 0415358187 (pb).This book considers selected themes in the history of British higher education. Focusing primarily on women students' experiences and on interwar and post-1945 developments, it augments the author 's 1995 study, No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities 1870-1939. Part one treats topics relating to university access, students' ambitions and their subsequent occupations. Part two explores how gender issues have influenced women's experience of co-education.The first two chapters deal with interwar developments, introducing valuable data from a survey conducted by the author in the mid-l990s, based on a sample of men and women who attended selected universities other than Oxford and Cambridge before the Second World War. Included is information about students' social origins (more diverse than sometimes supposed), how they funded their education, their career goals and later occupations. Both sexes in the sample pursued university education as a means of securing their socio-economic prospects, although the women students were less likely to arrive at university with well-defined career goals. However, Dyhouse concludes that university education was a more speculative investment for women than for men, owing to women graduates' limited employment options.Chapter three deals with women medical students in the period 1890-1939. Drawing effectively on autobiographical, biographical and interview material, the study identifies background factors and outlooks that encouraged women to pursue a medical career and their strategies for coping with a professional culture with masculine associations. The following chapter addresses the situation of women students just after the Second World War, when the proportion of women students at universities stagnated. There is an engaging account of contemporary concerns, often focusing on images of 'waste' (whether of talent or investment), in a period marked by a trend to early marriage and still limited employment options for women graduates. The next chapter considers the sustained growth in the proportion of women students at universities after 1970. A broad swathe of possible contributing factors is canvassed: institutional changes (for example, cuts in teacher training colleges encouraged more women to apply to university), a fall in fertility rates, feminist influence, legal changes C The author 2007. Journal compilation C Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Queering singlehood: Examining the intersection of sexuality and relationship status from a queer lens

“…However, the term “spinster,” often used for unmarried women was coined for women who spun wool. Spinning wool was one of the early economic labor available to unmarried women (Bennett & Froide, 1999; Froide, 2007; Hellesund, 2008). Old maid and spinster are generally considered negative connotations, where someone is off‐time in marriage or failed at finding a partner to marry (Hellesund, 2008; Sandfield & Percy, 2003).…”

“…Those who did not marry nor enter religious life (e.g., priesthood, convent), have often been looked upon with minimal respect or understanding in society and scientific literature, with the assumption that marriage is necessary to have the full human experience (Band‐Winterstein & Manchik‐Rimon, 2014; Byrne & Carr, 2005; Cherlin, 2004; DePaulo & Morris, 2005; Dykstra & Hagestad, 2007). These expectations and assumptions have maintained that single adults and LGBTQIA+ (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, and asexual) individuals are invisible and marginalized until recently (Barrett, 1989; Bennett & Froide, 1999; Froide, 2007). This paper aims to explore singlehood through a queer perspective, including the interconnectedness of LGBTQIA+ lives and singlehood today and throughout modern history.…”