Almost all women, she thought, when they are girls never believe that they will get married. The terror of spinsterhood hangs over them from adolescence on. Even if they are popular they think that no one really interesting will want them enough to marry them. Even if they get engaged they are afraid that something will go wrong, something will intervene. When they do get married it seems to them a sort of miracle, and, after they have been married for some time, though in retrospect, the whole process looks perfectly natural and inevitable, they retain a certain unarticulated pride in the wonder they have performed. Finally, however, the terror of spinsterhood has been so thoroughly exorcized that they forget ever having been haunted by it, and it is at this stage that they contemplate divorce.
Mary McCarthy, “Cruel and Barbarous Treatment”, 1939
Photo: R. Kennedy Stephen
