A return to romance: Winifred Holtby's spinster novels from between the wars

In ‘A return to romance: Winifred Holtby's spinster novels from between the wars’, I discuss Winifred Holtby's representations of the spinster in The Crowded Street, Poor Caroline and South Riding in the context of contemporary discourses on the spinster which, I argue, affect Holtby's representations negatively. I also suggest that despite Holtby's feminist desire to recuperate the much-maligned spinster in her writing, her failure to decisively uncouple romance from the spinster narrative consolidates the spinster in her traditional social role and transforms alternatives to heterosexual marriage, such as work, into mere consolations for the unmarried woman.