Old maids had a tough time in the early twentieth century. Not only were they laughable figures in the game of Old Maid, they also appeared on satirical postcards beginning in the Victorian period and continuing well into the new century. The Special Collections Library at Western Kentucky University has a large collection of such cards, all featuring sad looking women and often cruel messages. This one says: For you the summer’s gone/And the winter’s coming on/No paint nor powder can erase/The wrinkles on your face./What use are girlish ways and girlish dress,/We know you’re ancient nonetheless.
What amazed me in these images was that ALL of the old maids were very thin, showing that preferences in body shapes have changed a lot in the last 100 years. According to the historian Lois Banner in her book American Beauty, older women in the nineteenth century were expected to be plump. Plumpness implied children, warmth, and family. The skinny old maid depicted in these early twentieth century images appeared to be following the same rules. The fact that she carried her skinny frame into old age made her into a freak.
Who thought up such cards? Apparently many were a kind of “Vinegar Valentine,” sent to women as a warning of what might happen to them if they didn’t marry.
Others were Leap Year cards when, according to an old Irish custom, women had permission to ask men to marry them.
And some were sent unsigned just to be mean, proving that there were plenty of trolls long before the internet age.
What’s the difference between and old maid and a spinster? It sounds like the older women Banner describes are grandmothers. The old maid here seems never to have married, or she’s desperately seeking a partner.