They trolled never-married girls with hideous caricatures of absurdity, meanness and monstrosity (none very tops the vitriol-filled Satyr Upon past Maids, an anonymously authored 1713 pamphlet decrying these “nasty, rank, rammy, dirty nymphos”). And as the insurance policy of kingdom forged ahead, ladies who couldn’t, or won’t, procreate were authored down as worthless, or self-centered, or both. Whenever an 1851 census revealed this one byproduct on the Napoleonic conflicts and colonisation was actually a generation of “excess” girls counting inside their millions, some advised taxing their particular budget, although some needed these to be forcefully emigrated. However it absolutely was in the long run the Victorians exactly who, with their indefatigable feeling of reason and capabilities of relationship, rescued the spinster, championing inside her the rebel heart that fanned feats of governmental and personal change. Lees verder →