‘Nothing is Impracticable for a Single, Middle-Aged Woman with an Income of her Own’: The Spinster in Women’s Fiction of the 1920s

In Katherine Mansfield’s short story, ‘Miss Brill’ (1922), an ageing spinster assumes a practised air of joie de vivre. The shabby fox-fur fondly paraded by Miss Brill in all weathers is a totem belying the reality of its owner’s poverty and loneliness. The truth is brought home by a courting couple overheard in the park. The boy resents the ‘silly old mug’ of the ‘stupid old thing’ and the girl callously mocks the fur that to her looks ‘exactly like a fried whiting’. The story ends pointedly. Miss Brill carefully returns her cherished fur to its box, ‘but when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying’.1