The Surplus Woman. Catherine L. Dollard
of traditional alte Jungfern: the bitter shrew; the simpering, foolish romantic; and the beloved aunt. While Weber viewed these caricatures as fading remnants of a judgmental era, a review of the literature suggests otherwise.
The most widespread parody of the alte Jungfer was that of vile harridan. Weber described her in the following manner: “[She is] large, gaunt, with a pointy nose and stabbing eyes. She has a small inheritance, lives alone with a herd of cats and a lapdog, despises children with a dry, grim, merciless hatred and horrifies the young girls whose reputations and happiness she pitilessly attacks. Lonely, hated, and hateful she lives and dies. And yet she had so much love to give that no one ever coveted. This she gave to her cats and dogs.”43 Notorious for both her physique and her character, this figure is malicious. Yet she is also tragic in Weber's eyes, for her life has been determined and destroyed by lack of love. Other accounts were not so charitable, inspecting every physical characteristic in relentless detail: “A young girl becomes old and ever older, the desired deliverance from virginity never comes. Youthful freshness is lost, rosy cheeks pale, skin wrinkles and folds; hair that framed a cute, sweet face used to be full and opulent, but now it becomes thin—the mop almost looks like a wig (and sometimes it really is one); the face develops an angular form with plunging eyebrows, a pointy nose, a yellowed complexion, dried lips, all of which sit atop a neck that is sometimes narrow and long, sometimes short and fat.”44 While the physical aspects depicted might be attributed, however harshly, to the benign process of aging, the description explicitly links her appearance to the unfulfilled calling of the unwed woman—never achieving true womanhood as a wife and mother, her body has betrayed her literal and figurative fruitlessness.
Yet physical decay is only one aspect of a much greater deterioration. The old maid of this first type is utterly consumed by bitterness. The aged incarnation of the selfish dilettante, the spinster nag sees nothing but her own pain, lashing out at everyone and everything around her. Disappointment is the central component of her unhappiness, but a lifetime of stigmatization and ostracization has made her malevolent as well. Gertrud Bülow von Dennewitz, an advocate of women's rights who wrote under the pseudonym Gisela von Streitberg, saw the origins of such nasty creatures in the culture of bourgeois youth. A girl terrified of never marrying knew well “the heartless mockery of young girls toward unmarried old women of harmless nature who might here and there show some peculiar traits.” Such adolescents dreaded a similar fate: “[They] know only too well how soon they themselves will be written into the register of the aged…and already carry in their hearts the embarrassingly pressing fear that they themselves will be left behind…From such an individual then develops the embittered, jealous, malicious, in a word, unbearable Alte Jungfer, of whom it is doubtful whether she makes her own or other's lives more miserable.”45 Even this sympathetic portrayal concedes the misery that is spread by such a harpy. Another account describes the solitary woman as an increasingly angry figure: “Through the habits of intellectual stagnation she becomes petty and bitter, she scatters her stubborn narrow-mindedness and inconsistency, making her environment contentious and stultifying [and] giving the designation ‘Alte Jungfer its sinister timbre.”46
Embittered, the unmarried woman spreads bitterness; unloved, she is only capable of hate. The model of the shrew is the most prominent among the various lampoons of the spinster. The image fueled charges that the only true destiny for the female sex was marriage and motherhood. The following 1873 analysis of the Frauenfrage sums up the attributes of this most unfortunate female:
There is an army of deformities and abnormalities which develop into peculiarities and by which one can precisely designate the altjungfräulich… Sharp, surly criticism of the passions of youth which one can no longer enjoy; condemnatory envy which cannot look joyfully on the happiness of others . sorrowful satisfaction when someone married encounters misfortune; generally loveless behavior toward others; eavesdropping curiosity and a gossipy desire to report something ‘new’; pushy interference into the affairs of others;…pedantic emphasis on dull, meaningless things and adherence to order.47
Yet the same text also renders a profile of the shrew's opposite: the foolish romantic, a figure who exhibited “neglect of all order and unreliability in all affairs; ridiculous affection for particular loved ones, even animals; . oversensitivity [and] tears at the slightest cause, and then further self-satisfied tears over those tears;…repulsive excesses in the desire to please the palate; and more of the same sad things.”48
While neither of these parodies likely made for good company, both figures suffered from the ill effects of life without marriage. These two stereotypes existed in a dialectic—one cold and critical, the other excessive and emotional. What accounts for the stark differences between the two ridiculed figures? Both of these clichéd illustrations were based upon the experience of forsaken hope. But while one stereotype responds with bitterness, the second model of the old maid reacts to her fate with remarkable denial, her hopes still painfully intact, forever expectant of a transformation and forever unfulfilled.
This fanciful figure is more pitiable than the ruthless and angry shrew, for anger might at least serve as an outlet for pain. But the expectant romantic lives in a condition of denial. Never reconciled to her fate and never attempting to readjust, this fanciful figure exists as if frozen in time, waiting for her prince to come. This version of alte Jungfer is obsessed with remaining young and is therefore immediately recognizable.
Because she does not want to allow herself to become old, she desperately attempts to pass as a Backfisch by wearing coquettish hats, light dresses with stripes and polka-dots, [and] ribbons in the hair in order to carry and polish herself like a lass of seventeen or eighteen years. Her behavior also remains naïve, she blushes and bats her eyes bashfully low if a young man speaks to her, and if any more or less natural topic is discussed in society, she will act as if she believed in the “Tales of the Stork,” she laughs loudly where it is entirely inappropriate, behaves childishly, . endlessly thinks all young men are courting her and are in love with her, so that she finally is a comic figure. The poor foolish thing is laughed at by all sides.49
An element of craving might be added to the parody, pointing out “a perennially coy teenage smile…yearning gazes of desire toward gentlemen…suits of bright and garish colors…These and other similar effusions of unsatisfied longing form her repertoire.”50
This romantic is indeed hopeless. Her myopic vision and evidently low self-esteem encouraged condemnation of the unmarried as a whole—if the women themselves could not move beyond a belief in fairytale endings, why ought society to help them? The extreme nature of the depictions made the single woman alternatively an object of humor, disdain, mockery, pity, and condemnation. The more extraordinary the lampoon, the less seriously any calls for reform could be taken. And, paradoxically, the more difficult and intractable the plight of unmarried women became.
Not all representations mocked as meanly as those just described. Adelheid Weber's image of the addled romantic described a gentle woman who kept any hopes quietly to herself while working for her family: “Small, fine, with intimidated eyes and a smile always asking for forgiveness, [she was] the drudge mule of the family who did everything no one else liked to do…who had a thousand duties but none of them great, precise, or liberating…and from all she implored forgiveness for her worthless existence with her entire being.”51 Weber evoked a kind, submissive, selfless figure instead of a thoroughgoing fool. If this romantic maintained dreams, they were suppressed under an awareness of her present superfluity. Still, she could not escape the verdict of her youth and lived her life in the shadow of greater promises.
In her sympathetic description of this meek old maid, Weber set up the third member of her unmarried trinity: the beloved Tante (aunt). Neither angry like the shrew nor absurd like the starry-eyed ninny, the final model of the alte Jungfer was a figure to be emulated:
Our dear guardian angel to whom we as children bring our cuts and bruises, to whom young girls carry our hearts' troubles, and brothers while students bring their empty wallets, and our mothers bring concerns about household and children. And who has for us all needles and stain remover, consolation and understanding, a penny in time of need, good advice and above all a