Betsy Israel - Bachelor Girl

smoking, 114–15, 116, 130, 132, 133, 134, 143, 158

Smollett, Tobias, 16–17

Southgate, Eliza, 25

Speck, Richard, 228

spieling, 88–89, 93, 128

spinsters, 9, 14–53, 56, 57, 105–6, 109, 110, 129, 135–36, 190, 197, 219

behavior required of, 23–24

courtesan training proposed for, 21

deportation proposed for, 20–21, 23, 32

Depression era and, 161–62

in early America, 21–25

in 1851 British census, 19–21

in 1855

U.S. census, 23

first appearance of, 15–16, 18

free labor provided by, 139, 186 n

in industrial revolution, 18–21

as insane, 16, 29, 53

lesbians and, 11, 28–29

in literature, 14, 16–17, 19–20, 24, 48–53

maintaining contact among, 50

as widows-manqué, 23 n

work sought by, 18, 19–20, 23, 50

see also new spinsters; old maids

spinster stories, 50–52, 156–57, 262

Stanley, Henry Morton, 62

Stanley, Olga, 112

Stansell, Christine, 58, 71, 89

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 33

Steel, Dawn, 250

Steinem, Gloria, 210, 211, 213, 218, 235–37

Sterling, Claire Wellesley, 94

stock-market crash (1929), 147

Stoner, Lucy, 74

Storm, Gale, 196

stronger sex, women as, 172

Suckow, Ruth, 108–9, 163–64

suffrage movement, 74, 100, 114, 117

laws achieved by, 36, 45, 119, 126

political agitation in, 114, 173

Sullivan’s Travels, 155

Swanson, Gloria, 130

sweatshops, 58

syphilis, 68, 123

“Tabitha,” as name, 17

“Tale of Not So Flaming Youth, A” (Kirk), 134–35

tampons, 128, 218

Tarbell, Ida, 50, 115, 117

Tarkington, Booth, 102

tea dances, 120–21

telephone operators, 103 n, 152

Temple, Shirley, 178

Terrible Honesty (Douglas), 127

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 20, 48

Thomas, M. Carey, 26

Thompson, Bertha “Boxcar Bertha,” 154

Thompson, Dorothy, 146 n

Three on a Match, 158–59

Tompkins, Juliet Wilbor, 111–12, 145

Totenberg, Nina, 219

Toward a New Psychology of Women (Miller), 239

Traffic in Souls, 122–23

“transient bureaus,” 154

T. R. Baskin, 231–32

“treating,” 70–71, 88, 94, 135

Triangle Shirtwaist fire, 60

Trilby (Du Maurier), 110, 125

Trollope, Anthony, 48, 262

Trowmart Inn, 105–7

Truman, Harry, 175

tuberculosis, risk of, 136

Types from City Streets (Hapgood), 91

Ugly Girl Papers, The (Power), 69

University of Michigan, 194, 211–12

upper-class women, 117, 124

clothing of, 74–75

department stores and, 85

as domestic employers, 60–61

feminist, 109

muddy hems of, 74, 90

“slumming” by, 93–94

as spinsters, 18–19

urban sketch, 63–64

Ursuline religious order, 34–35

Valentine’s Day, 260

Van de Warker, Ely, 142

Van Ever, Jean, 174–75

Vanity Fair (Thackeray), 48

Viorst, Judith, 226

WACs (Women’s Army Corps), 168–69, 170

Wald, Lillian, 36

war brides, 171, 185

wartime jobs, 164–70

black women in, 166–67

in Civil War, 45, 46–47, 90

competence in, 167–68

for educated women, 165

in films, 167–68

number of, 165, 169

preparatory campaign for separation from, 168–69

propaganda for, 130 n, 165–66

temporary nature of, 167, 168–70

WACs in, 168–69, 170

in World War I, 129, 130, 142–43

Wasserstein, Wendy, 40

Welter, Barbara, 27

Wharton, Edith, 19–20

“What About Alice?” (Cohen), 248

What Should We Do with Our Daughters? (Livermore), 142

“What’s Wrong with Ambition?” (Weaver), 189–90

Wheeton, Ellen “Nelly,” 34

Where Are My Children?, 38–39

white slavery, 122–24, 125

Who’s Who (1902), 116

“Why Women Don’t Marry” (Tompkins), 111–12, 145

widows, 172, 198–99, 209, 235

widows-manqué, 23 n

Wilcox, Susanne, 115

Wilson, Edmund, 129–30

Wine of Youth, 132–33

witches, 17, 197

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 37–38

womanists, 109, 114

Women, The (Luce), 39–40

Women of New York, or Social Life in the Great City, The (Ellington), 77

Women of Steel, 166

Women’s Bureau, U.S., 147, 175

women’s colleges, 26, 114, 143

“women’s” jobs, 103, 150, 152, 170, 178

Women’s Moral Reform Society, 31

women’s movement, 208, 233, 234, 236, 251

see also feminists

Women Who Went to the Field, The (Barton), 47

Wonder Woman, 167

Woolf, Virginia, 110

Wordsworth, William, 17

Work-a-day Girl: A Study of Some Present-Day Conditions, The (Laughlin), 86

Working Girl, 101

World War I, 126, 127, 129, 130, 142–43

World War II, 146 n, 164–70, 178

see also postwar period; wartime jobs

Wright, Fanny, 35

Wylie, Janet, 227–28

Wylie, Philip, 228

Wyman, Jane, 198–99

“yellowback” romance novels, 60

“Yellow Wallpaper, The” (Gilman), 47–48

Yezierska, Anzia, 66–67, 69

Zaharias, Babe Didrikson, 155

Ziegfeld Follies, 94

BETSY ISRAEL is a journalist and former editor who has contributed to the New York Times , Elle , Rolling Stone , GQ , Harper’s Bazaar , Redbook , People , Mademoiselle , Vogue , New York , Spin , Playboy, and the Los Angeles Times , among many others. She is a former columnist for Glamour , US, and New York Woman, and was a contributing writer for Mirabella . She has written numerous screenplays and is the author of a memoir, Grown-Up Fast: A True Story of Teenage Life in Suburban America . She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.

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“ Bachelor Girl is such a delectable read that it belies its stature as a profoundly important synthesis. It takes a witty and perceptive stance on the culture, but it’s also a prodigious journalistic investigation that disinters the droll and moving social history of the single woman in America.”

“ Bachelor Girl is essential reading…. It provides a unique framework for understanding today’s single girl.”

“Ms. Israel’s book provides a useful history of single working girls and new women of all stripes, from the shop girl to the Gibson goddess to the swinging single…. Replete with both Dickensian details and humorous asides.”

“When it comes to being a bachelor girl, women have long been stuck with a stigma. Author Betsy Israel explains how to defy it.”

“Betsy Israel deconstructs all the old ‘single girl’ stereotypes, providing us with a fresh, perceptive point of view and elevating the bachelor girl to her rightful place in modern American social history—and it’s about time.”

“Betsy Israel salutes single womanhood from the last century’s spinsters to the career gals of today.”