{"id":84699,"date":"2014-06-04T06:59:47","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T10:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=84699"},"modified":"2014-06-04T07:05:16","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T11:05:16","slug":"on-spinsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=84699","title":{"rendered":"On Spinsters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessa Crispin, aka Book Slut<\/a>, has been writing a lot about the term “spinster” lately, and her posts have been fascinating. I saw Maleficent<\/i> the other day (more to come), and I’ve been thinking a lot about it, in conjunction with Crispin’s writings on spinsters. Her posts have been a perfect supplementary text to the movie and Angelina Jolie’s performance. <\/p>\n

In today’s post over on Book Slut<\/a>, Crispin calls for a “spinster library,” books\/movies that celebrate or at the very least portray <\/em>the potential power of the unmarried woman. Even in something ultimately tragic like The Heiress<\/i> (based on Henry James’ Washington Square<\/i>) what we see is that her “spinsterhood” is actually better than the alternative she was offered, if you think about it. She is now free. It is a terrible freedom, yes, but at least she now lives in truth, at least now she can see clearly, she is free from the societal ties that bind. She had been under-estimated her whole life. She had internalized that under-estimation. But not by the end, oh boy. She finally realizes her own power. She uses it. She is free. Go read Crispin’s words, she said it better than I could.<\/p>\n

Crispin is working on a new book and she quotes an excerpt from it, which made me think of Maleficent<\/i>, again:<\/p>\n

In Celtic fairy tales, there are two roles for women: the bride, and the hag. The bride, she is so very beautiful that men give her what she needs. She moves directly from the protection of the father to the protection of the husband. She wants not. But god, is she boring.<\/p>\n

The hag is the rejected, ugly creature. The woman who has to make herself wise, or just passively die on the side of the road waiting for someone to offer aid. She works for what she acquires, she seeks and finds wisdom through struggle. And she may know all of the secrets and understand everything that goes on around her, including the movement of the heavens and the language of the fish in the river and which god you need to talk to for which problem, she will always be physically repulsive.<\/p>\n

No wonder the hag is forever trying to mess with the bride. No wonder she says, “Fuck you little girl, here have a poisoned apple.” To just have the world on offer, rather than fighting and kicking and biting for it. And then to take it for granted, to just sit there waiting for it to come to you, for disrespecting it in that way, fuck that girl. Poison her, put her in a tower, pull her beautiful hair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jessa Crispin, aka Book Slut, has been writing a lot about the term “spinster” lately, and her posts have been fascinating. I saw Maleficent the other day (more to come), and I’ve been thinking a lot about it, in conjunction … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84699"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84705,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84699\/revisions\/84705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}