extension, those around her. Another stereotype of the spinster that has appeared in literature is the quick-witted and sometimes quick-tempered independent woman, who has remained unmarried by choice, as in "Spinster Thurber's Carpet" (1897), Pauline Phelps's popular short story and play about an unmarried woman who decides during the Revolutionary War that she'd rather have a carpet than a husband. The popular and shrewdly intelligent detective Miss Marple was a spinster heroine in Agatha Christie's series of crime novels, which later became a television series. Similarly, Miss Climpson in Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey novels is portrayed as an intelligent, competent person who serves as a valuable assistant to Lord Peter, as she can go places and ask questions that he can't. In Jane Austen's Emma, the character Miss Bates is a spinster and Austen (who never married) gives her stereotypical negative characteristics such as garrulousness. In Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Alia Sinai becomes a spinster after the man she was engaged to marry elopes with her sister. Alia's characterization at times resembles the proud, feminist conception of a spinster: she becomes a successful professional and a courageous pro-democracy political activist. Other aspects of Alia's characterization, however, align with the more traditional, misogynistic conception of spinsterhood: she is portrayed as ugly, bitter, vengeful, and, at least as concerns her family, destructive. Music The Kingston Trio's "Take Her Out of Pity", included on their 1961 album Close-Up, is based on the traditional American folk song, "The Old Maid's Song". Bob Dylan's song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (1963) tells the true story of a murder at a spinsters' ball in Baltimore in 1963. Paul McCartney, while in the Beatles, composed the hit song "Eleanor Rigby" (1966) about the loneliness and death of a spinster (though he never used the term in the lyrics). The country song "Delta Dawn", made famous by Tanya Tucker, overviews the plight of a woman focused on a single lost love, destined to go unmarried unless the lover returns. See also Cat lady Catherinette Hikikomori Medieval singlewomen She never married Sheng nu References External links Goodbye to the Spinster by Wendy Braitman Barbie: Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride by Wendy Braitman Age-related stereotypes English words Interpersonal relationships Non-sexuality Pejorative terms for women Stereotypes of women