'Old maids to radical spinsters'. Discuss the subversive potential of the unmarried woman with reference to one text.

During 19th century, women were expected to be proper and polite; on the other hand, to rebel against this expectation was to be the reverse: ugly, rude, vulgar, and impolite. In addition, a woman was usually perceived as the property of her husband when she married. Thus, once she married, all her wealth would belong to her husband. On the contrary, the remaining unmarried woman, labeled as old maids or spinsters were usually under the …

…Virago, 1981. Hudson, Pat. "Women and industrialization" in Women's history: Britain, 1850-1945. June Purvis (Ed). London: UCL Press, 1995. Humphries, Jane. "Women and paid work" in Women's history: Britain, 1850-1945. June Purvis (Ed). London: UCL Press, 1995. Morgan, Maggie. "The Women's Institute Movement-The Acceptable Face of Feminism?" in This working-day world: women's lives and culture(s) in Britain, 1914-1945. Sybil Oldfield (Ed). London: Taylor & Francis, 1994. Sharpe, Pamela. Women's Work: The English Experience 1650-1914. New York: Arnold, 1998.