I think I might be a spinster. Is there a checklist or something I can look at to make sure? Let’s see: over-educated, check. Glasses, check. Governess, oh no but teacher and librarian sort of equals that, terrible fashion sense, nope. Phew, this close to being a spinster.
But if I am a spinster and my life was a romance novel, then any day now Mr. Wonderful Pants should be coming along to sweep me off my feet. Which would be good because my love of beautiful shoes has completely ruined my feet. The bone below my big toe actually aches. However, I think that my shoes are the major fashion item preventing me from being a spinster.
In any case, I prefer romances featuring spinsters and bluestockings the most. It has to do with Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.
When I was between three and five I was obsessed with several things: Mr. Darcy, The Nutcracker, The Magic Flute and being a Sleeping Beauty princess. My love of Mr. Darcy was born of having viewed the old Masterpiece Theater version of Pride and Prejudice. I thought Mr. Darcy was a dreamboat. According to my mother, I used to pretend to kiss Mr. Darcy. I also wanted to be a ballet dancing, opera singer. Unfortunately, I was unable to carry either a tune or a rhythm. Such is life. I was also the oldest child of a family of girls.
By the time I was five I was very aware of the fact that eldest sisters rarely, if ever, get a happy ending. In order to get a happy ending one must the youngest or the only child. I was neither. I was convinced that somehow this dream of being a ballet dancing, opera singing princess in a story would some day come to pass. After all, if sudden transformations into great beauties have taught us anything then they have taught us that sudden transformations into great beauties are possible.
Imagine my bitter disappointment when none of this actually occurred. Ah well, what can you do. The other aspect of myself that characterized my childhood was deep sensitivity to anything that stank remotely of injustice or unfairness. That being said, it always seemed to me to be extremely unjust that ugly step-sisters and eldest children got the shit end of the deal in fairy tales. I mean, why should birth order rule you out of having a happy ending?
Which brings me back to spinsters, bluestockings and other aging virgins. Here then is coterie of ugly step-sisters and eldest daughters, albeit not in those terms, who are finally getting their happy endings. This coterie also includes any girls with glasses.
Favorites of this genre include, but are not limited to:
Mary Challoner in The Devil’s Cub
Annelise Kempton in The Devil’s Waltz
Beth Armitage in An Unwilling Bride
Penelope Featherington in Romancing Mr. Bridgerton
And most especially, Sophie Hatter in Howl’s Moving Castle which is not a romance but amazing, amazing, amazing.
What I think I like most about these stories is that these heroines are not the object of initial desire, but somehow by being their own self, they become beloved. While standards of beauty have changed, the one that has remained the same is that if a woman is to be successful in love then she must never be herself. This is the central thesis of the infamous The Rules but it is not a new thesis.
Yet, these stories reject the notion that in order to be loved or sexually desired that a woman must hid her intelligence, push her beauty like a drug or crumble in the face of danger. In short, to exhibit masculine qualities rather than feminine virtues. It’s rather heartening, but is it true? This I do not know.