Piętno starej panny. Ewolucja i społeczne funkcje dziewiętnastowiecznego dyskursu literacko-publicystycznego na temat niezamężnych kobiet
The Stigma of the Old Spinster: The Evolution and Social Function of Literary and Journalistic Discourses on Unmarried Women in the Nineteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: Szudarek explores the emergence of the negatively connoted figure of the “old spinster”among Europe’s privileged classes in the nineteenth century. She juxtaposes historicalresearch on unmarried women with literary and journalistic discourses and demonstratesthat the label of the old spinster, which stigmatised women and led to their exclusion,emerged in Western Europe along with bourgeois society at the turn of the eighteenthand nineteenth century. It responded to the need to subordinate women to the malehierarchies that came to dominate the public sphere. Works of literature carried figureof the old spinster to other geographical areas such as the Polish lands. The materialsexamined suggest that the marginalisation and exclusion of unmarried women from bothsociety and family structures was a literary or formal construct rather than a reflectionof actual social relationships.

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