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Single Life and the City 1200–1900 pp 1–24Cite as

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Introduction Single and the City: Men and Women Alone in North-Western European Towns since the Late Middle Ages

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Abstract

The history of single people, be they divorced, widowed or never married, has rarely been considered a happy one. Until the late twentieth century, the single status was not a desirable state in most cases. In a society that expected everyone to marry, singles were stigmatised, marginalised and had a hard time making ends meet. This image of vulnerable singleness dominates the historiography and permeates all early modern and nineteenth-century literature. In Jane Austen’s work, for instance, a woman with no fortune could not hope to survive if she did not have a husband. This is in sharp contrast to the image in contemporary mainstream culture and media. Fiction and films, such as “Bridget Jones” or television series like “Ally McBeal” that emphasise the singleness of the main characters, depict unmarried women, and to a lesser extent men, living in trendy cities, making their own money, answering to no one and living life to the fullest. The sitcom “Sex and the City” especially celebrates the urban single lifestyle. In their representation of empowered, confident singles, these series, which invaded our screens in the late 1990s, are indicative of how the status of singles has changed over the years.1

Keywords

  • Material Culture
  • Single Woman
  • Urban Economy
  • Unmarried Woman
  • Early Modern Period

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Ariadne Schmidt
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  2. Isabelle Devos
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  3. Bruno Blondé
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Antwerp, Belgium

    Julie De Groot

  2. Ghent University, Belgium

    Isabelle Devos

  3. Leiden University, Netherlands

    Ariadne Schmidt

Copyright information

© 2015 Ariadne Schmidt, Isabelle Devos and Bruno Blondé

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Schmidt, A., Devos, I., Blondé, B. (2015). Introduction Single and the City: Men and Women Alone in North-Western European Towns since the Late Middle Ages. In: De Groot, J., Devos, I., Schmidt, A. (eds) Single Life and the City 1200–1900. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137406408_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137406408_1

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

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