"The Best Or None!" Spinsterhood In Nineteenth-Century New England

Journal of Social History, Summer, 2000 by Zsuzsa Berend

But in the New World being "superfluous" was a sin. Many a young woman was troubled by a sense of uselessness. Frances Willard was shocked into thinking about being useful while recovering from typhoid fever: "I shall be twenty years old in September, and I have as yet been of no use in the world. When I recover ... I will earn my own living ... , and try to be of use in the world." [73] A year later she was still dissatisfied with herself: "What am I doing? Whose cares do I relieve? Who is wiser, better, or happier because I live? Nothing would go on differently without me, unless ... the front stairs might not be swept so often! ... Nobody seems to need me ... I see so plainly how well the world can spare me. But perhaps I may be needed some day and am only waiting for the crisis." [74]

Emily Howland, at twenty-one, was greatly troubled by not having found her vocation. She wondered: "why a life so useless should ever have been granted or why perpetuated ... is the most unaccountable of our Creator's providences." [75] In her late twenties, she was still "waiting for something to turn up." Her friend Carrie A. Rowland understood and encouraged Howland: "Thou art to be a worker in the vast arena of the world, it is no light task--can we devote so many years to worldly education and shall we be impatient because our spiritual training demands equal time for its completion?" She urged Emily to be patient: "I know thy spirit craves a high and holy life beyond that this outward world can give, and I would strengthen thee. I would encourage thee, not to sink down helpless and desponding, but work steadily onward and though thy advancement may seem slow to thee and the time cometh and the word goeth unto thee, 'come for all things are now ready,' thou shall find thyself possessed of powers of which thou has taken no account, they have grown so silently." [76] Rowland was encouraging Emily by suggesting that God would appoint the proper task at the proper time, and Emily's duty was to patiently prepare for some future calling.

When thirty-year old Emily Howland thought she found her calling she asked her mother's permission: "May I give a little of my life to degraded humanity? ... May I try if I really can to make the world a little better for having lived in it? Can't thee spare me a while to do what I think of my portion? I want to do something which seems to me worth of life, and if all my life is to go on as have the last ten years, I know I shall feel at the end of it as tho' I had lived in vain." [77] Others contributed to the world by raising "noble, worthy families"; Emily Howland wanted to do her "share to the world" [78] by being useful in other ways.

Catharine Sedgwick also "wanted some pursuit." She found that writing "relieved me from the danger of ennui." [79] But more than that, writing was her calling: "When I feel that my writings have made any one happier or better, I feel an emotion of gratitude to Him who has made me the medium of any blessing to my fellow creatures. And I do feel that I am but the instrument." [80] Acknowledging the compliments of Rev. Ellery Channing, she wrote, "I thank Heaven that I am not now working for the poor and perishing rewards of literary ambition ... they are not my object... There is an immense moral field opening, demanding laborers of every class... Neither pride nor humility should withhold us from the work to which we are clearly 'sent.'" [81]