Spinsters
The Single Woman of Today. By M. B. Smith. (Watts. 6s.) THAT spinsters in this gentler century are no longer said to be heading for an eternal friendship with an ape in hell is itself a sign that their lot has worsened. The very brutal directness of the old jibe bears witness that one could then reasonably believe a spinster had chosen, and having chosen, must bear comment on her choice. Now that there are so many more women than men, only a very few spinsters believe they have chosen celibacy, and of those few even fewer have really chosen it. But just because the spinster is no longer voluntary, and thus to the marrying majority proud, foolish and contemptible, she is now to be pitied. She is probably fully equipped for love and childbirth, and yet, simply because more women are reared than men, she has to watch the disuse and decay of her faculties with the distress of clear understanding or with the agony of an understanding clouded with neurotic compensations. It is bad. What is the answer ?
Miss Smith puts the problem squarely: "Is not a culture inade- quate that renders useless the elaborate physical, mental and spiritual equipment of these surplus women to bear and rear children ? On the other hand, can so-called 'free love' ever be the answer ? The family is the best-working known unit of society, and has the sup- port of Church and State alike. Both Church and State can give countless sound reasons, psychological and eConomic, why a spinster should not bear a child.... Is it fair to conditoin a girl for marriage and then condemn a large minority to go without it ?." The bulk of the, book which follows contains stories and résumés of other books, all of which cry out " No " to these questions. There stands out from the imperfect prose and confused exposition a letter Miss Smith prints from a single woman of 39 to her married lover. It presents with real vividness and directness the pain, the shame, the exultation, the shifting intensity, in a word the disarray, which is inherent in her situation. Examples and discussion alike accuse, often indirectly, the ways of our present society in accommodating spinsters. But when one thinks her case is established and expects her to bring forward remedies, Miss Smith still goes on telling, one about other people's books. This is a pity, because her own obser- vation is good enough and her own feelings are more than generous enough for her to have written her own book.. She also has a King Charles's Head which appears first in the dedication and then falsifies the argument at every step : "The frequency with which the desirable woman is committed to the ranks of the surplus, whilst the less worthy is often chosen in marriage, is one of the social injustices of our time. To these desirable women this book is sympathetically dedicated." The trouble is simply the preponder- ance of women ; a "degenerate masculine taste" is a red herring. Before the end Miss Smith has forgotten her starting point, that society ought not to deny to a million and a half women the exercise of their best faculties, and turns to advising the spinsters how to make the best of it. Work helps, so does company, so does religion ; but best of all, she says, is the cultivation ,of universal love, agape. It is a tall order, to fall back on agape when you are denied eros, but everybody knows that some single women can do it, at least for a time,.
It would have been better if Miss Smith had sustained her attack, and had in conclusion told the men and the married women what they ought to do about it. The spinsters, except for' the tiny number of true nuns and true career women, are victims of a trend as natural, as long as there is war, and as disastrous as any earth- quake. What could Miss Smith have urged us to do ? It is hard to devise palliatives without statistics, and these Miss Smith does not give us. Perhaps the first line of approach should be in educa- tion. Miss Smith could have urged mothers to abandon the usual "when you're married" for the "if you're married" which is now certainly demanded by the figures.
The book is printed in fine type on good paper. The dust jacket
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