“I am lonely,” Novelist Charlotte Brontë once said of her relationship status, “and likely to stay lonely.” Whether she stayed lonely or not, Brontë — the famed “Jane Eyre” author — eventually married Arthur Bell Nicholls. She died one year later.
Unlike Brontë, plenty of female writers chose to stay single their entire lives. For these women, marital status had no bearing on their creativity. Consider the following famous women of words.
Emily Brontë
Charlotte Brontë’s younger sister Emily touched the world with her single published novel, “Wuthering Heights.” Poet Dante Rossetti called it a “fiend of a book” and an “incredible monster.” Today, Scholastic markets it for high school reading lists as a dark romance.
Outside of her family affairs, the younger Brontë rarely socialized. Although she never married, she could certainly visualize the heartache felt by lovers, as evidenced by character Catherine Earnshaw who said, “I gave him my heart, and he took it and pinched it to death.”
Edna Ferber
American Author Edna Ferber likened spinsterhood to “death by drowning.” She went on to comically describe old maidenhood as “a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.”
During her years of husbandless solitude, Ferber penned several popular titles which were later adapted for the silver screen. These included “Showboat” (1926), “Cimarron” (1929), and “Giant” (1952), all of which spotlighted romance and marriage.
Jane Austen
When Jane Austen was nearly 40, the unmarried author wrote, “a single woman of good fortune is always respectable and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody.”
At that point in her career, with the publishing of “Sense and Sensibility,” “Pride and Prejudice,” and “Mansfield Park” behind her, Austen certainly was a woman of financial fortune. She died at 41 with no ring on her finger, but posthumously, some researchers intimate a romance between Austen and Tom Lefroy, an Irish contemporary. In fact, the 2007 film Becoming Jane explores their purported romance with unabashed authority.
Emily Dickinson
Historians may never pinpoint the nature of Poet Emily Dickinson’s sexuality or love life with certainty. The writer of “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” lived into her fifties without marrying, although experts speculate that the poet enjoyed her share of romance nonetheless.
William Luce’s one-woman play, “The Belle of Amhurst,” portrays many of Dickinson’s personal romantic tragedies. According to Luce, Dickinson met minister Charles Wadsworth only a few times but felt crushed by his unrequited love. In later life, historians believe Dickinson contemplated marriage with Judge Otis Phillips Lord, a friend of her father. However, this union never materialized.
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott, the author of “Little Women,” said: “I’d rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.” As the primary breadwinner for her mother, father, and three sisters, Alcott actually paddled a canoe for her entire family.
According to Researcher Harriet Reisen, Alcott wrote pulp fiction about spies, transvestites, and drug addicts under a pen name. It wasn’t until later in her writing career, when “Little Women” found success, that Alcott began to cultivate her real name as her brand. Because her father was such a poor provider for the family — associating with intellectuals like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau, but never earning enough money for food — Alcott resolved to feed her clan. And she did.
June 4 is Old Maid’s Day. Wedlock might bring security, but singlehood preserves two privileges forsaken by most married people: independence and freedom. Each of our literary “old maids” seemed to relish her singleton status, which begs the question; would these writers have enjoyed the same measure of success as wedded wives?
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