by Betsy Israel
CHAPTER 7: TODAY’S MODERNE UNMARRIED—HER TIMES AND TRIALS
Nancy L. Peterson, Our Lives for Ourselves: Women Who Have Never Married (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981); Dr. Connell Cowan and Dr. Melvyn Kinder, Smart Women, Foolish Choices: Finding the Right Men, Avoiding the Wrong Ones (New York: Signet, 1986); Molly McKaughan, The Biological Clock (New York: Doubleday, 1987); Sylvia Ann Hewlett, A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women’s Liberation in America (New York: Warner Books, 1987); Peter J. Stein, Single Life: Unmarried Adults in Social Con text (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981); Barbara Levy Simon, Never Married Women (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); Cynthia Heimel, Sex Tips for Girls (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
The terrorizing Yale/Harvard study that so inaccurately predicted my life’s out come is best dissected in Susan Faludi’s still-brilliant Backlash (New York: Crown, 1991). Two of the hundreds of paralyzing “You lose!” documents: Eloise Salholz et al., “Too Late for Prince Charming,” from the cover story “The Marriage Crunch,” Newsweek, June 2, 1986; Barbara Lovenheim, Beating the Marriage Odds: When You Are Smart, Single and Over 35 (New York: William Morrow, 1989).
Marcelle Clements, The Improvised Woman: Reinventing Single Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998); Louise J. Kaplan, Female Perversions (New York: Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, 1991); Lee Reilly, Women Living Singly (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1996); on hypochondria, the only documented disease of the unwed, Susan Baur, Hypochondria: Woeful Imaginings (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
Modern conduct guides in all earnestness:
Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, The Rules: Time Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right (New York: Warner, 1995).
Modern conduct guides with attitude and irony:
Cynthia Rowley and Ilene Rosenzweig, Swell: A Girl’s Guide to the Good Life (New York: Warner, 1999).
Periodicals—1980s/1990s–present:
Christine Doudna with Fern McBride, “Where Are the Men for the Women at the Top?” Savvy (Feb. 1980); Peter Davis, “The $100,000 a Year Woman,” Esquire special issue on women (June 1984). The author, in correspondence with editor, searches for a New Type who earns more than the average man—what is that like? What is she like? He finds her. Somehow convinces her to let him follow her through life for several months, and to interview her bosses, colleagues, ex-husband. She takes him on adriving trip with her parents, and gives him access to her diary; she comes off after all this exhaustive day-in-the-life attempt at finding “new pathos” as a demanding, difficult but truly remarkable, memorable person; Janice Harayda “Unwed Women Needn’t—and Don’t—Despair,” Wall Street Journal (June 27, 1986); Claudia Wallis, “Women Face the ’90s” Time (cover, Dec. 4, 1989); Richard Cohen, “What About Alice?” Washington Post, (July 28, 1991); David R. Williams, David T. Takeuchi, Russell K. Adair, “Marital Status and Psychiatric Disorders Among Blacks and Whites,” Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, vol. 33 (June 1992); “Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1989 and 1990” (The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1995); Torri Minton, “Road to Modern Romance Is Paved with Potholes,” San Francisco Chronicle (Feb. 12, 1993); Florence King, “Spinsterhood Is Powerful,” National Review (July 19, 1993); John Tierney, “Picky, Picky, Picky,” New York Times Magazine (Feb. 1995); Cynthia Heimel, “Solo Contendre,” Playboy (Feb. 1995); Judy Abel, “Sisters: The New Generation Gap: Twentysomethings Are Choosing Mom’s Family Values and Not Their Siblings’ Career Paths,” New York Post (Aug. 6, 1996); Katie Roiphe, “The In dependent Woman (and Other Lies)” Esquire (Feb. 1997); “Why Marriage Is Hot Again,” special section, Redbook (Sept. 24, 1997); “American Marriage Today,” special supplement, Brides Magazine: The Heart of the Bridal Market (Sept. 26, 1997); Lois Smith Brady, “Ready to Propose? Make it Short, Sweet and Real,” New York Times (Oct. 1997); Elizabeth Cohen, “They Don’t Want Kids: Why Women Are Opting out of Motherhood” (with a quiz: “Should You Become a Mom?”) (May 14, 1998); Sarah Bernard, “Early to Wed,” New York magazine (June 16, 1997); Jim Yardley “Going on Full Alert for a Dream Dress,” New York Times (Feb. 1, 1998), on the frenzy at Kleinfeld’s, the famed Brooklyn wedding gown emporium.
Novels
Gail Parent, A Sign of the Eighties (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987); Margaret Diehl, Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); Alice Hoffman, Seventh Heaven (New York: Ballantine, 1990); Lorrie Moore, Like Life (New York: Knopf, 1990) and Birds of America (New York: Knopf, 1998); Susannah Moore, In the Cut (New York: Knopf, 1995); Can dace Bushnell, Sex and the City, collected essays (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996); Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary (New York, MacMillan, 1998).
SEARCHABLE TERMS
Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.
“Aborting Matron, The,” 39n
abortions, 31, 38–39, 101, 109, 114, 132, 151, 202
Abrams, Charles, 220
Abrams, Sophie, 68
actresses, 93–94, 125, 152
in flapper films, 130–33, 137
in wartime films, 167, 168
Addams, Jane, 36, 115, 116
Ade, George, 114
adoptions, 202, 235
advertising, 125–26, 183, 196, 267
beauty, 191–93
classified, gender segregation of, 152, 178, 229
flappers in, 129
of hair dye, 191–92
in 1960s, 218
WACs in, 169
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (Rhys), 8, 164
Afternoon of Unmarried Life, The (Penny), 24
Alcott, Bronson, 34, 37, 44
Alcott, Louisa May, 26, 33–34, 37, 47, 270
life of, 40, 44–45
Alger, William R., 30
Alice Adams (Tarkington), 102
All That Heaven Allows, 198–99
Ally McBeal, 1, 256–57, 258, 263
Amazons, 37
“American Woman, Her Changing Role: Worker, Homemaker, Citizen, The” 175
Ann Vickers (Lewis), 163
Anthony, Susan B., 26, 31, 33, 45, 100
Anything but Love (Hawes), 174
Arbuckle, John, 105
Auerbach, Nina, 2
Austen, Jane, 24, 32, 48
Autumn Leaves, 179
Baby Boom, 249
baby brides, 251–56, 258
Baby Face, 157
bachelor girls, 107–12, 114, 119, 127
see also bohemians Baez, Joan, 218
Baker, Russell, 238
Banning, Margaret Culkin, 147
Barbizon Hotel, 106–7, 194–96, 221
Barnard College, 152
Barton, Clara, 33, 163, 270
life of, 40, 46–47
Barton, Mary, 33
Beat generation, 204–6
Bedlow, Harry, 70–71
bedrest, 162
Beecher, Catherine, 27–28, 61
Benjamin, Walter, 85
Bennett, James Gordon, 63
Bernard, Sara, 253
Best of Everything, The (Jaffe), 206
Bewitched, 17, 218
black women, 166–67, 226
Blondell, Joan, 153, 158–59
bobby-soxers, 178
bohemians, 9, 74, 107–12, 114, 123, 127, 164, 173, 204
critics of, 109–10
in Greenwich Village, 108–9
lifestyle of, 110–11
in literature, 108–9, 110, 111–12
Bonjour Tristesse (Sagan), 185
“Boston marriages,” 29
Bow, Clara, 97, 131
Bowery boys (“b’hoys”), 72–73, 75, 140
Bowery gals (“g’hals”), 56–57, 70–75, 127, 229
Bowery Theater, 75
Braddon, Mary Elizabeth, 48
brank (
gossip’s bridle), 38
Bread Givers, The (Yezierska), 67, 69
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Capote), 186
Breathless, 186
Bridget Jones’s Diary, 1, 256–58, 263
Brinkley, Nell, 113
Brontë, Charlotte, 20
Brooks, Louise, 97, 130–31
Brown, Helen Gurley, 212–13, 258
Bryant, Louise, 115
Bryn Mawr College, 26, 119
Buck, Pearl, 213
Bugbee, Emma, 154
Bundle of Letters to Busy Girls, A (Dodge), 96
Buntline, Ned, 77–78
But You Are Young (Lawrence), 141
Capote, Truman, 186
Cardozo, Caitlin, 253
Cassandra (Nightingale), 42
Cathy cartoon books, 247
censorship, film, 132
censuses, 19–21, 23, 58, 172, 188, 208–9, 214
Chambers-Schiller, Lee Virginia, 25–26
Chanel, Coco, 128
Chaplin, Eliza, 26
childbirth, 22, 31, 34
child-free lifestyle, 246–47, 261–62
Christmas in Connecticut, 249
Cinderella’s stepsisters, 18
City Is the Frontier, The (Abrams), 220
City of Women (Stansell), 58, 71, 89
Civil War, 23n, 28, 45, 46–47, 90, 114
Clements, Marcelle, 8
Cobbe, Frances Power, 53
Colby, Anita, 193
college education, 26, 32, 128–29, 143, 152, 165
in Depression era, 151, 161–63, 164, 178–79
of new women, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 127
in 1950s, 185, 188, 190
in 1960s, 210–11, 222, 223
communal living, 33–40, 53, 223, 224
abortion plots in, 38–39
feminist objections to, 37–38
in Greek mythology, 37
as psychologically unhealthy, 39–40
religious, 34–35
in settlement houses, 35–37, 143
Company She Keeps, The (McCarthy), 151n
conduct guides, 174–75, 200–202, 270
contraceptives, 109, 114, 152
condoms, 132, 151
diaphragms, 151, 211
laws against, 31
the Pill, 209–11
corn girls, 66
Cowen, Elise, 204, 205–6
Crawford, Joan, 130, 137, 140, 179, 197, 206
credit cards, 234
Crestell, Nicholas, 22
Crowe, Cameron, 106
Curie, Marie, 40
Damaged Goods, 123
“Dame, the,” 16
Dangerous, 157–58
Daughters of the American Revolution, 175
Davis, Bette, 13, 157–59, 177
Day, Benjamin, 63
Day, Doris, 199, 231
Days of Wine and Roses, 209
Dayton, Abram, 72–73, 75
Dempster, Carole, 131
department stores, 85, 99
see also shop girls, shoppies
depression, in married vs. single women, 250
Depression era, 150–64, 178
college education in, 151, 161–63, 164, 178–79
contraceptives in, 151, 152
female journalists in, 152–53, 154
films of, 153, 155, 156–59
heartless women in, 156–59, 172, 249
homeless women in, 154–56, 159
images of falling apart in, 163–64
job stealers in, 150, 152, 156
laws against married women working in, 150
literature in, 151, 153, 163–64
marriage rate in, 151
new women in, 159–60
office workers in, 152, 164
starvation in, 152
teenagers in, 160–61
young women’s frustration in, 159–64
diaphragms, 151, 211
Dickens, Charles, 17
Didion, Joan, 215–16
diets, fad, 136
diPrima, Diane, 204
divorce, 132, 209, 211, 212, 213, 235, 250
laws on, 27, 109
rates of, 116, 170, 175–76, 209
divorcèe paranoia, 176–77
Dodge, Grace, 96–97
Dodge, Mary, 28
domestic feminists, 27–28
domestic servants, 55, 58, 60–61, 73
Douglas, Ann, 127
Dreiser, Theodore, 53, 59
dress reform, 90–91, 114
Driscoll, Marjorie C., 154
drug addicts, 230, 241
Du Maurier, George, 110
Eastman, Crystal, 146–47
education, 25, 26–27, 28, 29, 32, 114, 133, 144
divorce rate and, 116
of shop girls, 97
see also college education
Eliot, Charles W., 116
Eliot, George, 48
Ellington, George, 77
Ellis, Havelock, 143
Emma (Austen), 48
Employments of Women (Penny), 61
Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 234
Equal Rights Amendment, 168
Ethan Frome (Wharton), 19–20
eugenics, 142
Expedition of Humphry Clinker, The (Smollett), 16–17
factory girls, 9, 56, 58–60, 61, 68, 73, 77, 79, 83, 85, 86, 87–88, 91, 94, 97, 129
Farmer’s Almanac (1869), 23
Farnham, Marynia, 172–73
Fates, 37
Fawcett, Edgar J., 65
Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), 209, 216
feminists, 8, 19n, 33, 36, 37–38, 63, 93, 114, 116–17, 173, 236, 247
domestic, 27–28
of Heterodoxy, 117
politico-, 50
ridicule of, 117
second wave, 118
upper-class, 108
Femmes savantes, Les (Molière), 16
Fielding, Henry, 17–18
Final Payments (Gordon), 224
Finney, Ruth, 154
flappers, 126–28, 142, 164
in advertisements, 129
clothing of, 127, 138
as demographic group, 128
era embodied by, 128
in films, 130–33, 135, 137
hairstyles of, 127, 130–31, 136
“It” as trait of, 130–31
men driven into ministry by, 137
as morally deranged, 136–37
new products used by, 128
origin of term, 129–30
problematic mothers of, 133–34
purchasing power of, 128–29
reportage on, 133–36
second-stage, 136–37, 138
sexual behavior of, 131–33, 134–36
siren as replacement for, 137–38
spinsterism as threat to, 135–36
“treating” of, 135
unhealthy lifestyle attributed to, 136
Flexner, Eleanor, 130n
Folks, The (Suckow), 108–9, 163–64
folliculitis, 136
Fonda, Jane, 218, 230
Foster, George, 65–66, 74, 75, 88
Franks, Lucinda, 230
Franny and Zooey (Salinger), 198
Frederick, Pauline, 156
free love, 35, 114, 141
Friedan, Betty, 184, 209, 216
friends, special, 28–30, 212–13, 262–63
Friendships of Women, The (Alger), 30
frigidity, 142, 144, 145, 172, 198
Fuller, Margaret, 30, 63
Garfield, 247
Gaskell, Elizabeth, 48
Genovese, Kitty, 228
G’Hals of New York, The (Buntline), 77–78
GI Bill, 186
Gibson, Charles Dana, 124
Gibson girls, 9, 124–26, 129
Gilliam, Dorothy, 226
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 34, 47–48, 115, 140, 160
Girl Terms Act, 204
Gissing, George, 48–50
Glyn, E
linor, 130
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 30
Gordon, Mary, 224
Graeae, 37
“Great Reprieve, The” (Didion), 215–16
Greek mythology, 37
Greeley, Horace, 63, 64
Greene, Gael, 194–96
Greenwich Village, 108–9, 117, 128, 163, 201, 205
Greer, Rebecca, 255
Gregg, W. R., 20–21
Griffith, D. W., 131
Grimké, Sarah, 2, 26
Group, The (McCarthy), 151
hair bows, huge, 119
hair dye, 136, 191–92
hairstyles, 232
banged, 69, 110
of flappers, 127, 130–31, 136
Haldane, Charlotte, 143
Hall, Stanley G., 116, 117–18
Hapgood, Hutchins, 63, 91
Harland, Marian, 51–52
Harlow, Jean, 141n
Hartmann, Susan, 169–70
Hawes, Elizabeth, 174
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 17, 38
heads of household, 208–9, 234–35, 239
Heape, Walter, 144
heartless women, 156–59, 172, 249
