Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own

by Kate Bolick

I’ve come to think that, much as neglect in infancy scars the eventual adult, so our first experiences of pleasurable solitude teach us how to be content by ourselves and shape the conditions in which we seek it.

I marvel over how the doors to our futures can be as unassuming as they are unexpected.

It doesn’t hurt to have patience for small-minded sorts, as the Bachelor Girl’s “point of view is rather a new one, and persons who are wedded to good old points of view, most respectable people in fact, hate the

effort of adjusting themselves to uncertain new ones.”

Coupling, I realized, can encourage a fairly static way of being, with each partner exaggerating

or repressing certain qualities in relation to the other’s. Along with meeting new people I was discovering a new self.

My father likes to say that for change to take place, a person needs “a push and a pull.”

What Edith taught me was this: to live happily alone requires a serious amount of intentional thought. It’s not as simple as signing the lease on your own apartment and leaving it at that. You must figure out what you need to feel comfortable at home and in the world, no matter your means (indeed, by staying within your means), and arrange your life accordingly—a metaphorical architecture.

Charlotte showed me that we become adults by learning how to be responsible to ourselves, whether or not we’re married or have children. I thought again of those classic architectural principles, balance and proportion.

Living alone forces people to figure out how to manage their emotional needs.

“I put in my list all the busy, useful, independent spinsters I know,” notes Alcott, “for liberty is a better husband than love to many of us.”