It is not often that we get a good spinster novel. Too frequently the figure is portrayed with great pity, or twisted and tormented by a lost love (a la Miss Havisham).
That does seem strange given the fact that after every significant war women have outnumbered men, and many have had to do without the loving (or not) attentions (or not) of a husband. After the Civil War, there was a tremendous imbalance of the sexes, and yet the only truly great document we have of the era is the diary of one such spinster, the Bostonian Alice James.
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