How to Die Alone: The Matron in the Progressive Era
"The good woman radiated her love, that was sisterly, motherly, and all, because it was the love of an old maid that had endured." - A.D.T. Whitney, from "A Word to Single Women" in What a Woman of Forty-Five Ought to Know [1].
Still tied to the stigma of the frail “old maid” during the Progressive Era, societal norms of the time viewed these single women past the age of marriage underneath a veil of pity. Without a husband and children, unmarried, middle-aged or elderly women, otherwise referred to as “matrons,” supposedly dealt with the absence of children and a husband constantly “throbbing in their souls.” According to the etiquette book What a Woman of Forty-Five Ought to Know, matrons spent their entire adulthood trying to fill this empty void rather than fulfilling their own lives. They did their best to cope with these unfortunate life circumstances by maintaining a healthy lifestyle for themselves and a youthful façade to substitute for the joys of a family. Despite these stereotypes set before them in etiquette books, matrons during the Progressive Era regularly enjoyed fully vibrant lives, free from the expectations associated with raising a family [2] .
[1] Emma Frances Angell Drake, What a Woman of Forty-Five Ought to Know (Philadelphia: Vir Publishing Co., 1902), 101.
[2] Ibid.