This woman or girl I shall call the positive spinster—that is to say, the type of unmarried female who says “Yea” emphatically to life, and whose tendency will always be to favour those opportunities, circumstances, and directions in her life which promise to lead her to motherhood and the normal functioning of her body.
(2) In the unmarried woman, however, whose body is not sufficiently healthy or tonic to act normally, there are the same forces present, driving her to employ her reproductive organs; but the insistence of these forces not being very great, the drive is hardly felt, or not felt at all. The ancestral habit, although the same of course, speaks with a fainter voice, and the correlation of organs which are less tonic and less healthy perforce generates a less impetuous impulse.
This woman or girl I shall call the negative spinster—that is to say, she is the type of unmarried female who either says “Nay” emphatically to life, and who will not hasten to seize opportunities that promise to lead to motherhood, or else she will be listless and apathetic about the whole matter, unconsciously so, and therefore consciously uninterested, unmoved by any of its aspects.
These two types of spinsters will now be examined separately.
(1) THE POSITIVE SPINSTER
She is usually a great conscious sufferer, sometimes both mentally and physically; for, while she possesses the physical equipment for marriage in a highly tonic condition, with all the potential virtues of the mother, this equipment and these virtues never have the opportunity of deploying their power.
She may, at the cost of great pains, develop other virtues and other adaptations; but the fact to be remembered about her is, that the functions for which she is best fitted and the virtues which are most essentially hers, cannot be used in her life.
Whatever else she may become—that is always her second calling. Her true vocation will have been missed. What perfection soever she may attain in her second calling, will always be inferior to that which she would certainly have shown in the calling for which she was primarily and chiefly endowed.
In addition, however, to the extra fatigue, worry, pains and distaste always connected with pursuing a vocation not primarily one’s own, she herself will always feel and reveal the disillusionment and bitter regret of one who is conscious of having been designed for something different. The mood of the artist whom circumstances have compelled to adopt accountancy for a livelihood, will be her constant mood.
In addition to being a person pursuing a wrong vocation, in this sense, however, she will feel something more than the artist who is doomed to accountancy. She will feel “out of it,” as the popular expression has it—outside that which is most thrilling, most enthralling, and most universally interesting, outside the main Stream of Life itself.