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In this chapter, the author focuses on the reflections on the lives and images of spinsters. He talks about spinsters in the novels of Muriel Spark. A peculiar aspect of the changing discourse of the spinster is the collusion of feminism with her demonisation in the early twentieth century. The Cult of Single Blessedness affirmed the vocational life of unmarried women. The author traces the ways in which single women have been regarded in Western culture, specifically in Britain and America, over the past two centuries.
In this chapter, the author focuses on the liberal British campaigner and MP of the 1940s, Eleanor Rathbone. She is best known for her long campaign for family allowances. The author talks about Tante Leonie's life in Offenburg, or about how their lives changed after the National Socialists came to power in January 1933. The author presents the letter written by Leonie's sister-in-law Meta (wife of Sigmund's brother, Bernhard) to her daughter Trudel.