The Chicago spinsters: Stella Miles Franklin and the New Woman response to marriage inequality

This paper focuses on the portrayal of spinsters in the unpublished writings of Australian feminist Stella Miles Franklin. I emphasise the ways Franklin's spinster narratives are shtaped by her feminist social purity and New Woman intellectual and artistic influences, as well as by her personal experiences as an unmarried woman. I suggest that Franklin joins New Woman writers beginning to portray spinsters as sympathetic characters, but goes one step further in scripting these ‘old maids’ as attractive, intelligent, and competent. Such portrayals include nuanced representations of unmarried women as first, witty, vivacious, and physically attractive characters; second, women who negotiate romantic relationships with men for themselves and others; and third, characters involved in feminist civic-minded work.