Novo Raposo, Julia María2024-05-212024-05-212023-07-11https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/21723This paper examines the representation and social construction of spinsterhood in latenineteenth- century and mid-twentieth-century Anglo-Irish and English literature. Focusing on an Anglo-Irish Victorian novel, Edith Somerville and Martin Ross’s The Real Charlotte (1894), and a post-Second-World-War English novel, Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women (1952), this study explores how unmarried women were portrayed in literature and what stereotypes were associated with them. By analysing the novels within their historical and sociocultural contexts, the paper aims to illustrate how societal expectations and gender norms influenced the lives of spinsters. This study follows a feminist approach to literature, exploring the experiences of unmarried women in terms of identity, agency, social acceptance or rejection, and adherence or challenge to traditional notions of womanhood. The analysis of the main characters of The Real Charlotte and Excellent Women, Charlotte Mullen and Mildred Lathbury, identifies common themes in the portrayal of spinsters, such as social isolation, self-reliance, pressure to marry, and subversion of traditional gender roles. This paper also aims to determine whether negative stereotypes of and prejudices against the spinster remained in the mid-twentieth century, at a time where women had achieved more rights and independence than they had had sixty years before. Ultimately, this study aims to contribute to the broader understanding of gender roles, stereotypes, and dynamics in literature, as well as the construction of one’s identity through social conventions and expectations.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesstesis de maestríaAnglo-Irish literatureEnglish literaturenineteenth centurytwentieth centuryspinster