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Biography & Autobiography. Sociology. Nonfiction. HTML: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book â??Whom to marry, and when will it happenâ??these two questions define every womanâ??s existence.â? So begins Spinster, a revelatory and slyly erudite look at the pleasures and possibilities of remaining single. Using her own experiences as a starting point, journalist and cultural critic Kate Bolick invites us into her carefully considered, passionately lived life, weaving together the past and present to examine why sheâ??along with over 100 million American women, whose ranks keep growingâ??remains unmarried. This unprecedented demographic shift, Bolick explains, is the logical outcome of hundreds of years of change that has neither been fully understood, nor appreciated. Spinster introduces a cast of pioneering women from the last century whose genius, tenacity, and flair for drama have emboldened Bolick to fashion her life on her own terms: columnist Neith Boyce, essayist Maeve Brennan, social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and novelist Edith Wharton. By animating their unconventional ideas and choices, Bolick shows us that contemporary debates about settling down, and having it all, are timelessâ??the crucible upon which all thoughtful women have tried for centuries to forge a good life. Intellectually substantial and deeply personal, Spinster is both an unreservedly inquisitive memoir and a broader cultural exploration that asks us to acknowledge the opportunities within ourselves to live authentically. Bolick offers us a way back into our own livesâ??a chance to see those splendid years when we were young and unencumbered, or middle-aged and finally left to our own devices, for what they really are: unbounded… (more)
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Instead we get a look at how spinsters of bygone ages affected and shaped Bolickâs decision to remain single and live alone. It is relatively fascinating although impersonal. For example when I was single and living with my partner, I was continually peppered with âwhen are you gonna tie the knotâ questions. 99% of these came from women and when I said we had no plans and I didnât have any desire to do so (unless there was a practical, monetary reason) they were perplexed and some were insulted. Bolick doesnât relate much of this kind of thing in her own life, which I have to think happened with similar frequency (sheâs only 4 years younger than me).
Her choice to remain single is an unpopular one, but itâs certainly easier now than it was for the heroines in her life. Those ladies were brave and yes, some succumbed to join the vast majority and become âthat useful animal a wife and motherâ, but neither decision was an easy one for them. If a man chooses to remain single, itâs a natural state and one slyly applauded by those in his circle who have yoked themselves to a woman. The institution of marriage is seen as a harness, prison, ball-and-chain and every other variation of an unfree state for a man. Not so for women. Marriage for her is correct, desirable and the ultimate expression of her femininity; to be enclosed, cared for and given the opportunity to breed freely. Even now, 100 years on from the general emancipation of women, the stigma of singlehood affects women, but not men. The state is taken as a mark of undesirability, not a personal and well-reasoned choice. At the end of the book, Bolick frustratedly asks âare women people yet?â and it seems, lamentably, weâre not.
Being ensconced in this salon of 6 magnificent women was inspiring and heartening, validating just about any choice you want by emphasizing time and again that there are as many right choices as there are determined women.
Bolick's "awakeners" were not really spinsters. Columnist Maeve Brennan married briefly. New Woman Neith Boyce, who wrote about the benefits of single sisterhood and the life of a happy working woman, did too (to a repulsive playboy, no less). Flapper poet Edna St. Vincent Millay married (but lived unconventionally in an open marriage. Gilded Age novelist Edith Wharton married. Social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (famously the author of important feminist short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper") married and divorced. Though all found unconventional ways to live with their spouses (or leave them altogether), Bolick's blueprints for singleness were not all happily single. Bolick acknowledges this too, and that is where the selective biography comes in. Bolick creates a narrative of singleness through mental dialogues with these women, through the way she chooses to think about and remember them. They are mental avatars for qualities she desires, or ways of living she likes to think about, but they are incomplete pictures of these women--this is the limitation of biography and the the limitation of idolatry. Throughout the book, as Bolick learns more about these women and their lives, her ideas about them shift, and her own growth as a person can take their positive and negative qualities equally into account.
This is NOT a self-help book. The tone is literary memoir, not chatty step-by-step, a deliberate choice from an author who makes clear throughout her memoir her desire to be a "serious" writer and a poet. The prose is infused with delicate and lyrical turns of phrase that attempt to elevate the book out of the commonplace nature of the genre. Bolick is also very firmly upper-middle class. Raised in a large house in Newburyport, MA amid the WASPy denizens for whom money is a given and whose children can grow up to do what they want to do, Bolick has the privilege, opportunity, and support to pursue a career in writing and academic musing. She moves to Boston and New York, living in nice places (but each with their problems, like no washer/dryer, as Bolick is quick to note), with the safety net of her family home to fall back on, should she fail (which Bolick at least acknowledges). She admits the downside to being unmarried - only one income, no support at home (forcing one to create support networks outside the domestic sphere), but this too is steeped in privilege. Many women in America live in poverty or in the lower middle class. Being single (and musing about it for two decades) is simply unrealistic for these women. Bolick has access to birth control with no judgment (to keep herself from being limited by childbearing), family money to fall back on (allowing her to live alone risk free), and the strong support of the likeminded, urban, moneyed literary elite. Bolick's "awakeners" are likewise privileged in many ways. Not all of them were wealthy, but all were white New Englanders. This is Bolick's memoir. She can only write what she knows, and she acknowledges her privilege. I note this as a caveat on the book's accessibility. Most of us will never realize a life of this amount of privilege, but we can take from her writing what inspiration we may.
Readers who desire a stronger message about decisive singleness will be disappointed. Bolick is a serial dater, a woman who doesn't want marriage but doesn't know how to be single, as she notes. She is somewhat chagrined by this, but the underlying message is one that has long been the feminist creed: feminism and equality mean letting women choose their own path, whatever it is. Bolick wants to be a staunch bastion of singleness, but that's not who she is, and eventually she comes to find a way of life that can accommodate her desire to be single and coupled. Her message is this: "...the question I'd long posed to myself--whether to be married or to be single--is a false binary. The space in which I've always wanted to live--indeed, where I have spend my adulthood--isn't between those two poles, but beyond it. The choice between being married versus being single doesn't even belong here in the twenty-first century." Bolick suggests that we have come so far though the 19th and 20th centuries (as she discovers through her awakeners) that this question is irrelevant, that women are gaining real personhood, the ability to be judged not by their marital state, but by their dreams and accomplishments. It's a hopeful message, but when one looks around at a world still firmly entrenched in married=good, single=bad dichotomy for women, one might wish for a book that more firmly validated the generally unpopular decision to be single and childless, especially one that wants to reclaim the term "spinster" and make it a creed for individualism.
Spinster: Making a Life of Oneâs Own is a hybrid memoir and biography of five women writers roughly 100 years older than the author, Kate Bolick. I made it â of the way through before putting it aside for the long haul
The book had much promise, but ultimately Iâm a reader more intererested in the bits of sociology and history about marriage trends in the past centuries than I was in the biographies I read. Part of the reason I wasnât interested is because Iâve read about lots of these figures before as well as Bolickâs inspiration, Carolyn Heilbrunâs Writing a Womanâs Life. Iâm not so surprised by this book after reading lots of feminist literary theory starting in undergrad.
I was pleasantly surprised that the author is in her 40s, so she's well past the most common age of first marriage, and singleness takes on a different texture as you get older. As it happens, I am very near to the author's age (within a couple of months) and have some similar work experiences (albeit at a much less lofty level), and I am about as spinstery a spinster as you'll ever meet. Yet I saw little of myself in what I've read so far. That's not a bad thing; not all single experiences are the same. If this were marketed as a straight-up memoir, I'd be less bothered by the disconnect. But it purports to be some sort of statement about the life of unmarried women, and so far, I'm finding little there of value. The subtitle is more appropriate--I'd even tweak it to "Making a Life of My Own" to show that it is focused on the author's own life, not spinsterhood in general.
If I were to judge it simply as a memoir, it's ... adequate, inoffensive, and not quite interesting enough to tempt me to read more.
I enjoyed taking this path of acceptance with Ms. Bolick and she really helped me look into myself a lot and to try harder to look at my own spinsterhood in a more positive light. I can see this being one of those books that I go back to from time to time as a reminder to just keep traveling no matter what life does or doesn't bring you and that it's okay to walk the road less traveled.
I highly recommend to ladies of any age.
*I received an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review*
This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I found myself much more interested in Bolick's life than her Awakeners, and wishing that there was a little less of their stories mixed in. It got a bit wordy with the history occasionally, and some of that probably could have been left out. I found the title and cover a little misleading; to me it looks a bit more like a book of humorous essays. That being said, I found Bolick's personal story fascinating. A lot of her feelings and choices really resonated with me, and I'm glad there are books like this out there.
I was excited to receive Spinster: making a live of one's own. I thought this book had great potential. What I find though was a wordy description of bayous feminist writers intermingled with stories from the author's life. I found
I received this book for free from Library Thing in return for my honest, unbiased opinion.