Frances Albert Doughty's "Noted Bachelors and Spinsters," Catholic World, Aug 1898

Dublin Core

Title

Frances Albert Doughty's "Noted Bachelors and Spinsters," Catholic World, Aug 1898

Subject

Cushman, Charlotte Saunders, 1816-1876
Hosmer, Harriet Goodhue, 1830-1908
Social Critique
Gender Norms

Source

Catholic World

Date

1898-00-00

Type

Reference

Article Item Type Metadata

Text

"It is always interesting to observe how persons above the average of their kind have demonstrated the usefulness and the happiness of life under exceptional conditions. Biography, however, is as limited in revealing the actual feelings of the great as those of the obscure. The reader has to bring intuition to bear upon it, and to derive from what is written some consistent and harmonious idea of the large part that never could be written. In studying the records of famous bachelors and spinsters we cannot fail to reach one conclusion: that those who were unhappy throughout life would have been unhappy also if they had married, their prolonged dissatisfaction being the result of character, temperament, ill health, poverty or persecution, rather than of the disappointment in love to which it is usually credited. In fact, that disappointment often served for companionship after the first bitterness was past, acting as an incentive in some line of noble endeavor." (pp 650-651)
"In reading history we discover that what, for want of a newer designation, we have to call a 'platonic' friendship, was sometimes the strongest feeling in the lives of a man and a woman. It is probable that even in the old pagan world a few admirable examples of this unselfish devotion existed, but the pagan civilization in its general trend was unfavorable to a pure friendship between persons. of opposite sexes." (pp. 651)
"pious celibate" (pp. 652)
"Another highly endowed single woman, seemingly set apart from man's love and wedded to her art, was Charlotte Cushman. Those who saw her in the great Shaksperean [sic] drama realized what the stage might be made if the popular tast could become elevated to the degree of patronizing only great plays and great actors. By her tones, her facial power, her wonderful magnetism, she swayed human emotions ever on the side of truth and justice, ever to the scorn of meanness and cruelty. A meeting between her and the famous artist, Mlle. Rosa Bonheur, was described by Miss Cushman in an interesting manner. She said her face was "lovely, refined, not French, full of intense feeling, with bright, clear, truthful eyes, thin but mobile lips, beautiful teeth, little hands, but with a true grip-altogether the most charming great woman I have seen." These two gifted spinsters of this century had their memorable interview at Mlle. Bonheur's chateau, where visitors mount the stairway to the delightful studio in the tower designed by the artist herself." (pp. 657)
"In the modern world of letters, art, science, and philanthropy the list of unmarried women is too long for other than a general mention of the representatives, and many names are likely to be omitted. The following, not all equally endowed or equally useful, but all having celebrity of one kind or another, may be specified: Catharine Sedgwick, Harriet Martineau, Maria McIntosh, Julia Kavanaugh, Amelia Edwards, Jean Ingelow, Lucy Larcom,ยท Constance Woolson, Agnes Tincker, Phoebe and Alice Cary, Maria Mitchell, Harriet Hosmer, Dorothea Dix, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Peabody, Clara Barton, Frances Willard, and Emily Faithfull." (pp. 657-658)

Provenance

Social Bookmarking

Collection

Citation

“Frances Albert Doughty's "Noted Bachelors and Spinsters," Catholic World, Aug 1898,” Archival Gossip Collection, accessed March 29, 2024, https://www.archivalgossip.com/collection/items/show/668.

Output Formats